Valhalla Island

If you’re a regular reader you’ll know I’m not a huge fan of Byran Veloso or his work. When Avalonstar was taken down, I wasn’t impressed with the reaction. The public’s reaction was sickening, he left a meticulously designed letter, if something really bad had happened, the site wouldn’t have been taken down and no letter would have been left. I don’t normally agree with Paul Scrivens but he could not be more right and I’m so glad Veloso has been called out.

I’ve never understood the following Bryan Veloso has. The design is mediocre and what writing I have read is childish and arrogant. What kind of person labels themselves a rockstar in all areas of everything? So the stunt he pulled taking his site down and the gushing that followed made me angry. These quotes are from the Wisdump post.

We at 9rules emailed Bryan because we are always concerned when we read about something happening with one of our members. We got no response. So we emailed again…no response.

While I don’t think so many people should have emailed him, no one I read about, received a response.

Then Bryan himself posted a message on his site and again it was vague. Again it played with the emotions of the people who look up to him. Again it kept people in the dark, but you know what? He could still Twitter that he was going to DDR. He couldn’t respond to emails or let people know that things are okay, but finding the time to do other things was not a problem at all.

This is what said to me the whole thing was a stunt or simply a complete overreaction - that and this:

I’m going to take a wild guess, it wasn’t that bad because the message his wife/girl/fiance/whatever left was perfectly styled in that Veloso kind of way.

Fair enough, something happened, this site was taken down, the reaction blew it out of proportion, not replying to email was childish and added to the proportion blowing out. Then it became clear email wasn’t being replied to not because it was physically impossible but by choice.

What’s even more sickening is that nobody has even called him out for it. Instead we get people patting him on the head telling him it’s okay that he isn’t happy with his redesign and we all have to fight personal demons (last I checked it was just a personal blog design, not a failed cure for cancer).

This is what I originally had said about it, to quote myself.

…if something horrible happened to me or my family the last thing I’d be thinking is “oh no! What about my blog readers?”. No offense everyone.

It’s summed up nicely by Paul with these two quotes:

This is a grown man acting like a child and loving every moment of the attention that he is getting and showing no respect to the people that got him to where he is at.

Making the decision to do what I did to Avalonstar proved to be one of the hardest of my career.

Open your eyes to the world young buck. It’s just a site and if that’s the hardest decision of your career, you ain’t been through shit in your life yet.

He’s right, as much as I love the internet and love my websites, if I was forced to take them down, it would be a long, long way from the worst thing that could happen. The comment thread on that post (now linked three times, it’s that good) continues the discussion.