TheOther99 and TIm Pool; apparent creative fracture

Just when you think it is safe to doze off . . .
by Ogrmi 2:30 am January 5, 2012

Let me open by saying this will be written in narrative as I was actually a marginal participant in part of this story. Last night a little before midnight, I had been dozing, something woke me up, so I reached over to restart my movie and hit my twitter client instead. The first message was posted from TheOther99 twitter account stating that Tim Pool was no longer a part of TheOther99. Great, what fresh nonsense is this?

I had a Facebook tab up as well where I found a confirming message from Tim Pool; however not much else at that time. I decided to check the Timcast.tv Ustream archive, nothing there more recent than the New Years Eve broadcasts. Then I checked WeAreTheOther99 Ustream page and the last broadcast there was 18 days ago by Tim.

So back to the Timcast.tv twitter stream which by now was flooded with comments.
This is a sample of the twitter comments from last night in the Ustream channel:

ogrmi I find this so disheartening but I would like to hear both before I form opinion


anon2world Henry James Ferry, aka @theother99 has blocked @Timcast (the creator of the site and live stream) from streaming/accessing site. #teamTim

[some comments flew by]

thejusticefiles its time to organize against @TheOther99 for booting @TimCast. spread the word. unfollow @TheOther99


HatchBill Honestly. Have never viewed @TheOther99 saw henry once on @Timcast 's stream

[more comments flew by]

 
 While I was watching twitter and trying as diplomatically as I could to fish out some sort of coherent information, I was also researching. Greg Mitchell of The Nation was the first to post;

Greg Mitchell also reported for The Nation the following:
12:30 Trouble in paradise:  Ace livestreamer Tim Pool (featured in Time magazine and elsewhere) has suddenly been denied access to his home TheOther99 Ustream site, which he helped set up.  Tweets late Wednesday from his partner Henry at @theother99 and @Timcast confirm it, but no explanation given.   Pool says he discovered it when the log-in was changed and he was denedi "access" to recorded streams.  Pool will now stream exclusivley at his own Timcast.tv.  Stay tuned.

Between Facebook, Mitchell and the occasional friendly source on my main Twitter feed, I was beginning to tease out that allegedly Henry Ferry had locked Tim Pool's access to not only TheOther99 Ustream channel but was also refusing Tim Pool access to his own intellectual property.


However, little did I know, I was about to get my a$$ handed to me by a newer [to me and whom I follow] twitter user;

ogrmi @thejusticefiles: Really? You have not given Henry or Tim a chance to explain

 thejusticefiles@ogrmi how do you know what i know? that was an ignorant statement.



  OccupyForTruth According to source at #OWS @TheOther99 FIRED Tim Pool @TimCast after threats to transfer all donated money to himself as he is "the star."

[ubiquitous comments flying by]

ogrmi @thejusticefiles You are entitled to your opinion; My Question is why you would campaign against anyone in the movement without hearing BOTH 

DBCOOPA Watch timcast.tv or I will punch you in the shirt. @timcast #ows

thejusticefiles its time to organize against @TheOther99 for booting @TimCast. spread the word. unfollow @TheOther99

I'll spare the reader the bot-style repetition of thejusticefiles call to action against Henry Ferry, which by the way I believe is abusive. They had the familiar ring of the old BBS style actions syntax. One in particular; thejusticefiles is marching around the room with a sign that reads: [user fills in the blank]

The comments ran 90% along the lines of public condemnation of Henry and TheOther99 crew. I quickly gave up trying to get information from what I considered to be an angry mob in every sense of the word. I did finally get information that Tim Pool had streamed live and that is where some in the twitter feed had received their "inside" information. So perhaps thejusticefiles was right on one very tiny point; I was not privy, as hundreds of others, to the content of that stream. 

I was as surprised at the Tweeple I had respected, immediately suspending following TheOther99and worse in the rhetoric department. This is one reason why so-called citizen journalists are not taken seriously. A J-school graduate worth his/her salt would never quit a relationship in the publishing business based upon rumor and innuendo. And what of process? If the allegation is true, the process is to enter into mediated negotiation with the other party, resolve the conflict or resolve to part ways. In which case it would have been reasonable to do a press release delivering the facts. Citizen journalists who do not follow guidelines are still accountable for the consequences of their actions.

Moreover, I stick to my original position. How can you condemn anyone publicly without hearing their side of the story? Is this not one of the founding planks of the unofficial Occupy platform; something about returning to the original spirit of constitutional rights and so forth?

There is allegedly some mysterious source at OWS supplying information, there were the tweets from TheOther99 account allegedly by Henry, althought Tim later tweeted from that same account to show he still retained access to it. There were Tim Pools statements on Facebook and on the Twitter timeline after the stream he did live. That's it. 

As of this writing, the full story is not known to anyone other than Henry James Ferry and Tim Pool.

Editor's Update: the author did receive notice from Tim Pool that he had written his own narrative and it can be found in the frame below.

01.05.2012: Henry Ferry released a statement at about 8:30 pm this evening, you can access it from this link

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