Clever Link Bait or Just Plain Cruel?

Posted on 11. Sep, 2007 by DeanHunt in Online Marketing

Today I am going to share with you a mystery that has been described as:

“Hilarious”, “funniest thing to ever get on Digg.com”, “The cruelest thing I have ever seen”.

It all started 67 days ago when this story was submitted to Digg.com – NEED A LAWYER?.

The article shows a profile page for Michael K. Brandow who is a law attorney.

The article had huge viral success due to the photo of Michael.

The story was so big that people started to suggest that perhaps this was just a clever link bait scam, designed to attract links and publicity, and that perhaps the photo was either fake, or that Michael pulled that face in order to get the publicity.

Then things went quiet for a while…

But then a potentially awful discovery was made… I was reading ABOVE THE LAW.COM where they had used this photo:

Here is the shocking discovery: “Mr. Brandow is legally blind. He chose to take his firm profile picture without his dark sunglasses to feel and perhaps appear more normal. Good job mocking the disabled.”

If this is the case then it appears that potentially millions of people have been publicly mocking a blind man for the past 69 days.

Ouch!

I hope that if Michael is blind, then he has not been upset by any of this. It really has become a huge viral story, and numerous fakes have been made:

So what do you think: Clever link bait, or just plain cruel?