History XanatosGambit / RealLife

* Ironically Disney would fall victim to one of these years later in 2017, when CEO Bob Iger announced his bid to acquire Creator/TwentiethCenturyFox for $52 billion. In the midst of the acquisition, Creator/NBCUniversal announced their own bid to acquire Fox for $65 billion. This forced Iger to raise his own bid to $71 billion in order to win the bidding war, with the acquisition being completed in 2019. Despite not acquiring the Fox library, Universal managed to force Disney to pay for much more than they would have wanted for their acquisition. On top of that, Universal came out of the bidding war with two major wins over their rival in terms of streaming. The first being that Disney was obligated to pay Universal $27.5 billion for their remaining shares of Hulu by 2024 and the second being that they managed to acquire Sky TV whose infrastructure Iger wanted to use to bring Disney+ into Europe.

* The Ellen Pao debacle on Reddit. Ellen Pao was forced out of her job as CEO by the board in July 2015 following a controversy over the dismissal of "Victoria", an important liason between the website's community moderators and the staff of Reddit itself. While Pao publicly admitted the fault of administrators in the relationship to the moderators, Pao herself had since the beginning of her tenure as CEO been the target of much thinly-veiled racist and sexist hatred from many members of the Reddit community. Pao was already a known controversial figure at the time of her hiring for suing her former Silicon Valley employer for sex discrimination. Pao also suffered renewed focus after the banning of the subreddit /r/fatpeoplehate, which administrators claimed was banned for encouraging hateful acts in the real world, rather than just hateful expression in the subreddit. To her critics, this was evidence that Pao was intent on cleansing Reddit of all disagreeable opinions in favor of turning Reddit into a politically correct safe-space where free speech was discouraged, instead of the "bastion of free speech" that its original creators intended. Pao was fired after intense calls for her resignation. Yishan Wong, a previous CEO, revealed after her firing that Pao was hired in part specifically for the purpose of immunizing the site against claims that it supported racist, sexist or otherwise hateful speech because of her reputation, but that Pao was the lone member of the board who OPPOSED the banning of hateful/distasteful subreddits. The rest of the board who supposedly believed in the "bastion of free speech" were actually in private constantly pressuring her to purge hateful speech on the site-- pressure that she refused except in extreme cases such as /r/fatpeoplehate. In fact, Wong stated, the earlier policy of reddit's management had been to ban anything racist, sexist, or homophobic, but as the community grew, the management became unsure if this was the best policy. Ellen Pao was hired in part to manage this issue. However, with the firing of Ellen Pao, the secret champion of the "bastion of free speech" model, the new CEO planned to purge the site of hateful communities, just as the rest of the management board had always wanted. In other words, had Ellen Pao remained as CEO, the site could withstand any criticisms that the site existed to promote racism, sexism, or other hatred by Ellen Pao's reputation alone. But the hateful members of the community created such pressure through their irrational hatred for her that they unwittingly destroyed their own champion, allowing the management to purge the site of hateful groups as it always desired. Well played, Reddit management... well played.
** Wong also suggested earlier that even this plan was part of a larger plan hatched by the Reddit board to wrest control of the company away from Conde Nast, its former majority shareholder. The company was acquired several years prior, but it became immediately clear to Reddit's original management that Conde Nast's management was inappropriate for the social media site. The site's creators then formed a plan to "recruit[] a young up-and-coming technology manager with social media credentials" (i.e., Ellen Pao), rejecting all other candidates. This manager would then only take the position on the condition that Conde Naste dilute its ownership; the manager was instated with the goal of raising funding outside of Conde Nast, to further dilute the parent company's ownership. After it was sufficiently diluted, the plan was to manufacture a series of "otherwise improbable leadership crises" (e.g., the banning of /r/fatpeoplehate, firing Victoria) so that the board would have justification to demand the ouster of this new manager. Now that Conde Nast was relegated to a minority role, the original managers of Reddit could use their renewed board influence to re-instate Reddit's founders into primary leadership positions. Had this failed, the site would have still retained all other advantages of Ellen Pao's leadership, including dilution of Conde Nast ownership and control, and immunization from anti-hate attacks.

* [[{{Troll}} Vox Day]], aka Theodore Beale, claims to pulling one of these (by name) with the 2015 UsefulNotes/HugoAward. He claims that the "Sad Puppy" movement, which claims that authors at the awards show are treated differently based on their political beliefs, got enough voting members of the Hugos to affect the vote outcomes. Further, he claims the Puppies win no matter what happens: either their votes are honored, and the titles he claimed to be "more worthy" titles win over what he would claim to consider consider [[OscarBait award show bait]], or else the show refuses to honor the votes, which he says would show the ceremony to be a sham. Naturally, when he claimed that the Hugo Awards chose "No Award" in various categories, he declared victory or so he claimed. Whether or not it is so, though, is another debate and a very controversial one, so [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment maybe it's better to not really touch the issue more than that on the Internet]].

* Vox Day claimed to pull one of these (by name) with the 2015 MediaNotes/HugoAward. The already "Sad Puppy" movement and his derivative "Rabid Puppy" movement, both of which claim that authors at the awards show are treated differently based on their political beliefs, got enough voting members of the Hugos to affect the vote outcomes, which they used to vote en masse for their preferred candidates. The theory is that the Puppies would win no matter what happened: either their votes are honored and their chosen authors get the awards, or else the show refuses to honor the votes, which would show the ceremony to be a sham. In the end, [[SaltTheEarth the organization chose "No Award" in many categories]], allowing Day to claim victory.

* When it comes to asking questions, this can be used to convince someone of something you want. For example, if you want to go to the arcade, ask someone, "Why can't/shouldn't we go to the arcade?". This way, that person will think of it as a good idea and will have to follow through, or you will be able to learn about something about the arcade that will give you an idea on what will attract him to the arcade, or you get to learn a thing or two about that person and use that person's rationale for something else you want. Basically, you either get what you want, or you learn something that you can use against that person to get what you want.