4 ms·

tl;dr: Devil's Advocate. This is not going to be very popular, but I'm just going to go on the record and say that this whole story may be a hoax. And I highl

tl;dr: Devil's Advocate. This is not going to be very popular, but I'm just going to go on the record and say that this whole story may be a hoax. And I highlight "maybe". What we have here are two blog posts from someone we know nothing about who epitomizes a concentration of fears (woman, home, identity, violation) and manages, in two blog posts over the past seven months to bring about a PR nightmare for AirBnB. Is Chesky and idiot and/or sociopath? Probably not, and this could be some crappy CYA on AirBnB's behalf, but the second blog post in response to Chesky's On Safety release does nothing but reinforce and add onto the imagined fetal-curling fears the author expressed in her first post, but also systematically tries to disprove any actions mentioned by Chesky while simultaneously smearing unnamed AirBnB reps. Two blog posts over seven months. Talented writer with no writing history able to communicate and project emotions and elicit visceral responses from complete strangers. Am I the only one whose bullshit alarm is going off? Disclaimer: I have no connection to YC, pg, AirBnB, Chesky, Starwood Hotels nor have I participated in AirBnB's program or any similar crashpad/couchsurfing/hosteling schemes.

watty 15y ago
Why would AirBnb intentionally suicide?
krschultz 15y ago
That doesn't really make any sense. If it was a hoax, AirBnB would have come out and said that in their TC post. Instead they came out and said effectively 'yes, this happened, we're fixing it'. The victim is now disagreeing with AirBnB's assertion that they are fixing it. Obviously AirBnB has confirmed the damage to her house. As have the police. So you are basically arguing that she trashed her own house and committed the crime of filing a false police report in an all out effort to crush AirBnB. Occam's Razor tells me the odds of that being the true angle here are slim. As for your comments 'someone we know nothing about' and 'talented writer with no writing history'. You know nothing about her. You have never seen her writing before. But why should you know a random stranger? And most writers are not bloggers. The internet is not the universe. I've won a bunch of awards for my fiction writing, yet you probably can not find more than my HN posts online from me. Believe it or not, some things exist out there that Google can't find.
- jsavimbi 15y ago
  > Obviously AirBnB has confirmed the damage to her house. As have the police. Sorry, but I've seen no proof of either and I doubt that you have. Even if AirBnB has seen the damage as reported by the host and the SFPD have a person in custody, what we have is the alleged destruction of property and alleged identity theft. Alleged, not proven. > You know nothing about her. Exactly, but what I do know is that there's a person who has made use of her blog three times this year: 1/22, 6/29 and 7/28. Two of those posts relate to AirBnB, drawing attention to the intense emotional trauma she's currently suffering and inattention and callousness that AirBnB is displaying towards her situation. Prior to that, we have an entry from 8/3/10. Nothing much to go by in order to assess who this person was prior to the AirBnB incident. Except we do have a blogroll link for "My year of getting published" dated one month ago. How odd. Another thing that we have, and I'm drawing my own conclusions here, is the perfect recipe to get noticed in a sea-full of nerds: single vulnerable white female, lives alone in SF, violated by the actions of an unknown person or persons and who is crying out for help, appealing to the crowd who'll most like empathize with her: nerdy single guys who'd jump at the chance to put on their cape and save the day. It's too perfect of a recipe to ignore. So what I'm saying is that she should get herself a lawyer, today, and have them handle her case and public relations going forward, because we all know that she's going to sue AirBnB and due to the amount of buzz she's been generating on the Twitters, my guess is that many a TV producer has been tasked with tracking her down for an interview. We'll see how that plays out. If it took Chesky a whole month to address these issues of hers and implement changes in the organization to address them and those issues were real and valid, then shame on him, but something tells me that they may have expected this problem to go away. I'm not trying to draw and links between this woman's complaint and those of the Groupon cafe owner, but it sees to me that, as always, people are engaging in activities whose potential consequences they know nothing about and in response they take to the web to generate outrage in support of their situation, but in those cases that I'm aware of, the stories start to unravel once they undergo any scrutiny beyond reading a blog post or two. And if I'm still able to gauge public opinion correctly amongst the normals, most are going assume that you get what you deserve for handing the keys to your apartment to a total stranger for a whole week. It's something that is simply not done in the real world.

watty 15y ago

Why would AirBnb intentionally suicide?

krschultz 15y ago

That doesn't really make any sense. If it was a hoax, AirBnB would have come out and said that in their TC post. Instead they came out and said effectively 'yes, this happened, we're fixing it'. The victim is now disagreeing with AirBnB's assertion that they are fixing it. Obviously AirBnB has confirmed the damage to her house. As have the police. So you are basically arguing that she trashed her own house and committed the crime of filing a false police report in an all out effort to crush AirBnB. Occam's Razor tells me the odds of that being the true angle here are slim. As for your comments 'someone we know nothing about' and 'talented writer with no writing history'. You know nothing about her. You have never seen her writing before. But why should you know a random stranger? And most writers are not bloggers. The internet is not the universe. I've won a bunch of awards for my fiction writing, yet you probably can not find more than my HN posts online from me. Believe it or not, some things exist out there that Google can't find.

jsavimbi 15y ago
> Obviously AirBnB has confirmed the damage to her house. As have the police. Sorry, but I've seen no proof of either and I doubt that you have. Even if AirBnB has seen the damage as reported by the host and the SFPD have a person in custody, what we have is the alleged destruction of property and alleged identity theft. Alleged, not proven. > You know nothing about her. Exactly, but what I do know is that there's a person who has made use of her blog three times this year: 1/22, 6/29 and 7/28. Two of those posts relate to AirBnB, drawing attention to the intense emotional trauma she's currently suffering and inattention and callousness that AirBnB is displaying towards her situation. Prior to that, we have an entry from 8/3/10. Nothing much to go by in order to assess who this person was prior to the AirBnB incident. Except we do have a blogroll link for "My year of getting published" dated one month ago. How odd. Another thing that we have, and I'm drawing my own conclusions here, is the perfect recipe to get noticed in a sea-full of nerds: single vulnerable white female, lives alone in SF, violated by the actions of an unknown person or persons and who is crying out for help, appealing to the crowd who'll most like empathize with her: nerdy single guys who'd jump at the chance to put on their cape and save the day. It's too perfect of a recipe to ignore. So what I'm saying is that she should get herself a lawyer, today, and have them handle her case and public relations going forward, because we all know that she's going to sue AirBnB and due to the amount of buzz she's been generating on the Twitters, my guess is that many a TV producer has been tasked with tracking her down for an interview. We'll see how that plays out. If it took Chesky a whole month to address these issues of hers and implement changes in the organization to address them and those issues were real and valid, then shame on him, but something tells me that they may have expected this problem to go away. I'm not trying to draw and links between this woman's complaint and those of the Groupon cafe owner, but it sees to me that, as always, people are engaging in activities whose potential consequences they know nothing about and in response they take to the web to generate outrage in support of their situation, but in those cases that I'm aware of, the stories start to unravel once they undergo any scrutiny beyond reading a blog post or two. And if I'm still able to gauge public opinion correctly amongst the normals, most are going assume that you get what you deserve for handing the keys to your apartment to a total stranger for a whole week. It's something that is simply not done in the real world.