> The parallel I see is that in both cases, you're introducing things into the news cycle for your own benefit. That's just PR. I'm tired of PG's submarine es

> The parallel I see is that in both cases, you're introducing things into the news cycle for your own benefit. That's just PR. I'm tired of PG's submarine essay. Although he's got a cute hook with the concept of "the submarine," what he describes in the article is just bog standard PR. But somehow HN folks (most of whom have no direct experience with PR themselves) have come to believe, based on PG's essay, that anything involving placing a story with a reporter is some special thing called a submarine. Anyway, yes, this fake person is an example of PR, but the reason it's worth writing about is that it's a great example of truly shitty PR. Reporters live to find out The Truth, and they hate to get lied to or fooled. Anyone who put Drew Cloud in their stories is going to be pissed off at LendEDU for a long time. Pissing off reporters and editors is generally considered to be a bad PR strategy.