The Hold-My-Beer Gambit: OZY Style

Just when you thought you were OUT...it pulls you back IN.

Just another Silicon Valley start-up…nothing to see here.

It’s all fun and games until you almost kill a guy.

Literally.

That is, both the fun and the games and the killing. But kids do stupid shit and realistically speaking the smarter the stupid kid, the more grandiose the stupidity. Like? Like starting a fire in the laundry basket to see how big of a fire you could actually blow out before…? Before…? Who thinks that far ahead?

Or: starting a fire inside of a roll-top desk to see if the lack of oxygen when you closed it would kill the fire. And then forgetting you had done so.

Or, a few of my pièces de résistance, using a light socket via my walkie-talkie’s antenna to juice up the signal, smashing .22 bullets between rocks, jumping into wells or cracking a pumpkin-sized hornets nest in two with a baseball bat. Just to see what would happen.

The outcomes of all of these were fairly predictable but over time and with age, range and strength, the stunts got more…worldly. And traded on a failure to correctly apply the principles of physics to the much more real world, for nine year olds, of cartoons, for example.

This is just to explain how we thought it made sense to throw a cinderblock over a wall and down on a guy waxing his convertible 70 feet below. We watched it fall and blow through the roof of his red, late ‘60’s muscle car before we wandered off, forgetting about it almost as fast as we had thought of it.

And the roasting began. Long, vicious and well-deserved, the shellacking finally garnered a response from Watson: “I gave an interview. Shared all of the exciting things happening at OZY,” Tweeted Watson. “The content is all true.” Something, it seems, absolutely no one believed.

Until Philippe came running back down the alley we were about to head down with real mortal terror playing on his face: the guy was there. Not only was he there but he had a wrench and there was murder in his eyes.

Long adept at both running and hiding I sought to do both until I heard my mother call me to dinner. Oblivious to the life and death struggle that was about to end the life of her son. I knew if I delayed she’d be panicked. I knew if I went down the closest alley I’d be caught.

I didn’t want my mother to panic and so down the alley I went, between the brown Crown Heights houses and was immediately set upon by the wrench-wielding, justifiably enraged West Indian.

I told him to let me go and that was the last truthful thing I said. Even at nine years old I hated to lie. It always felt to me like…cowardice. Omit. Obfuscate. OK.

But out and out lie? Who does this?

Unless you wanted to make yourself look better, which I didn’t care about. Or gain an unearned reward. Or, like in this very specific instance, avoid punishment.

I could see my mother vaguely making out that there was something wrong with the shadows moving across the street from our house and so the lies flowed faster. I didn’t want her to come over and there was a steely resolve that suddenly kicked in and involved me telling the potentially manslaughtering man that held me by the neck that the kids that did it had fled down the street, run right past us. I gave descriptions. Names. I lied about everything.

It was total life and death sincerity, with me looking him straight in the eyes, my tear-stained eyes (for effect) and his red-rimmed but now softening eyes. He let me go, and headed after “them”. And I made it home for dinner.

“What was happening over there?” My mother asked.

“Nothing.” Like Yossarian had realized in Catch-22, you could lie sometimes, and it would be…good.

Though, of course, it stands to reason that the exact opposite could also be true.

These last few weeks though, if you’re a fan of the Twitter machine, you’d have noticed a few items. One minor, and one not so.

The first indicated that the blizzard of bullshit that framed what OZY, my professional home for nine years had become, had “hired” or retained David Lawrence, former Goldman Sachs Associate General Counsel and Managing Director. Lawrence had also brought to the table time in the trenches at the Criminal Division of the United States Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York, where he had become the Office's first Chief Ethics Officer.

[T]his is precisely the kind of thing that might restore the confidence the Crisis Community believes was so sorely needed to restore confidence in Carlos Watson’s Aguirre-like efforts to maintain some sort of professional viability with the zombified OZY.

This is/was what any/many would call…a good Public Relations move. Rocked by scandal after after scandal in 2021, this is precisely the kind of thing that might restore the confidence the Crisis Community believes was so sorely needed to restore confidence in Carlos Watson’s Aguirre-like efforts to maintain some sort of professional viability with the zombified OZY.

The second? Well, that’s really why we’re here.

“OZY is getting redesigned! Read all about the new look here,” Watson blasted out on Twitter Wednesday before last, and it included a link to an article in Tech Bullion. The article? “Ozy Media CEO Carlos Watson Says a Fun Redesign Is on the Horizon.”

The article was full of the same sort of right-sounding happy talk that was so much a part of my life, nine years in total, at OZY. Aspirational, even if ultimately both shitty and shifty, Watson hit all of the right notes, as well as having conflated his 2021 troubles with the tough year America had in general.

The article’s author was really feeling/buying it. The article’s author was really selling it/shilling it. And the article’s author was also named Hugh Grant. Which, if you think about it, is not even the craziest thing. While I just shrugged being, at this point, far removed from Watson’s efforts to make Watson as beloved a household word as Apple or Oprah, like he was fond of saying, Craig Silverman, a reporter from Pro Publica smelled a rat.

A reverse image search revealed that the photo of the totally inconspicuously named Hugh Grant, was a stock image that appeared all over the Internet. Think: Tom from MySpace. Just not real.

Even beyond that, the email connected to “Hugh Grant” was actually traced back to a company that

1] thought using “Hugh Grant” as their fake writer’s name would escape further scrutiny and

2] were paid to make media placements.

And the roasting began. Long, vicious and well-deserved, the shellacking finally garnered a response from Watson: “I gave an interview. Shared all of the exciting things happening at OZY,” Tweeted Watson.

At this point, and finally it seems to me, interest in the story is not necessarily fueled by deprecation. No, it’s much more accurately now just driven by…a morbid fascination.

“I had the expectation the interview would be published in a mainstream business news outlet. It wasn’t and the author used a pseudonym. The content is all true. Great content, wrong delivery.” Something, it seems, absolutely no one believed.

Moreover, if the initial claim was that former COO Samir Rao had had a “mental health” crisis when he impersonated a Youtube exec in an attempt to secure $40 million in financing, a “misstep” he had ultimately been fired for, what would explain/excuse this?

Undeterred by the vertigo-inducing twists and turns of the story, Silverman asked what any reasonably curious person might have. Also, what anyone halfway savvy knew was coming: “I've asked him if he or anyone affiliated w/OZY paid for the interview/article.”

That question remains unanswered and OZY has gone back to repackaged articles against the wishes of journalists who are having their bylines yanked, happy talk and the truly terrible The Carlos Watson Show. But Watson, himself, with the platinum pedigree of Harvard, Stanford, Emmys, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, People Magazine’s Most Eligible Bachelor, for chrissakes, still inspires confusion and interest.

How could Watson, after, according to reports, collecting some $83 million, having started, built and sold companies, and made, unquestionably a whole passel of right moves, suddenly not be able to make any?

None of the former investors I know and have talked to seem to know. Nor do passels of ex-employees I still talk to. Samir Rao is, wisely, mum, and has even retained his own counsel, a move that suggests to some observers that he may have turned and talked to current investigators.

Would that only Watson would talk. Of course to talk, he’d have to know. And to know he’d have to understand. All almost impossible to do when you’re scrambling to keep the world unspooling in front of you straight.

At this point, and finally it seems to me, interest in the story is not necessarily fueled by deprecation. No, it’s much more accurately now just driven by…a morbid fascination.

Like you might have for setting fires. Or sticking forks into light sockets.

But who does this kind of thing? Yes, precisely that: who?