CrowdStrike's $10 Empathy Failure
This one’s coming in late for a few reasons. First, I’m in Chicago right now, serving in the writers room for the Democratic National Convention and it has keep me busy to say the least. If you’re in the area, hit me up! Feel free to just reply to this email. I’d love to see you if I’m not sequestered away in the basement of the United Center’s referee locker room.
Second, right after McSweeney’s published this essay about CrowdStrike’s complete apology collapse (which was almost, but not quite, as bad as the tech failure itself), their crisis PR team reached out to me. They claimed they didn’t want to stop me from expressing my opinion, but that I immediately (if not sooner, as Trump said today) had to respond to their “fact check” of the piece.
Now, this was a great opportunity. I did edit one ‘fact’—I had said that “over” 8.5 million devices had been affected, when in fact the statistic from Windows was that they had “estimated” that 8.5 million devices had been affected. I told them I regretted the error (true!), fixed it in the column, and appended a correction note at the bottom.
Of course, a number of the other “corrections” were PR spin. For example, they wanted to “correct” my assertion that CrowdStrike’s CEO dodged Savannah Guthrie’s key question on The Today Show. Of course, whether someone dodged a question is an opinion, not a fact—one which I’m right about, though feel free to judge for yourself—but it was fascinating to see the language of fact-checking weaponized this way.
I asked the PR representative if she’d talk to me on or off the record about this approach. Was it effective to try to bully negative writing about your client through the guise of fact-checking? And before blasting this out, I wanted to give her time to respond. It would make great material for my book, I told her. Alas, she didn’t take me up on my offer to chat.
Speaking of the book: I have nearly finished my book proposal, and I’m looking for agents to send it to. If you know an agent who might be interested, please let me know! I’m going to start hunting for one once we’ve kicked off the party to save democracy here in Chicago.
In the meantime, you can read my latest on CrowdStrike’s $10 Empathy Failure by clicking below!