"Ace Williams is a fraud."
I think most of us already have pegged Ace Williams as a "throw crap against the wall and see what sticks" type of rumor-mongerer, but nonetheless his rumors sometimes boil over to the MGoBoard and some people still praise him on twitter.
Fueled by his misrepresentation of the Kellen Jones story, his "reporting" of 24/7's work towards getting Michigan an actual 24/7 site which in turn halted the discussion, and his incorrect and unsourced rumors, it seems like someone ("ScoutExile") did some investigative reporting of his own, and found that -- in his own words -- "Ace Williams is a fraud." (i.e. there is NO Ace Williams -- he is just a ghost of another ex-blogger.)
The write-up at Midnight Maize is pretty thorough (and it's hilarious that he copied his twitter picture out of a hair-styling magazine).
http://midnightmaize.blogspot.com/2011/08/who-is-ace-williams.html
Discuss?
How's the six pack looking?
I clicked through because at the moment (read: off-season) all this Ace Williams hullaballoo is kinda amusing, but, no real shockers or revelations here.
What "Ace" has done (i.e. create a totally made up persona) is something that's very common amongst bloggers, few of whom use their real identities. Many bloggers will blog in more than one niche, and have a different persona for each one.... including a different pen name, picture, etc.
I guess this is somewhat less common in the sports blogging space and maybe that's why people are somewhat surprised by this "revelation" that Ace Williams is not a real person. The article doesn't have that much in it that's revelatory though.... Ace Williams is obviously a pen name. The pic he uses is obviously a modelling head shot. I realized this even before the specific pic was found. "Ace" probably went on Google images, found a pic of a physically attractive man, and jacked it for his own usage.
Anyhow, this kind of thing happens on the internet all the time, it just so happens that "Ace" really sucks at doing it in a way that's even remotely convincing.
"Ace" probably went on Google images, found a pic of a physically attractive man, and jacked it
NTTAWWT
August 1st, 2011 at 10:07 PM ^
LOL wow. Didn't even notice that when I wrote it, good catch.
I haven't looked at all of "Ace's" tweets and posts, but from a cursory glance seems like he is just aggregating a lot of info from premium message boards, TomVH, other Michigan blogs and then making high probability educated guesses. Similar to "Jonathon Paige", except this guy is doing it for pageviews instead of to expose the danger in automatically trusting anyone on twitter.
At any rate, his real name is pretty easy to fine if you just google any of the helix4 tweets...
Called himself Jonathon Paige, here's the story.
http://summerhoopscoop.blogspot.com/2011/06/experiment-in-modern-recrui…
Guy just recycled the same news over and over. Before long he was seen as a bit of an "expert."
August 1st, 2011 at 11:38 PM ^
Cool link, but I highly doubt that's a unique (or even rare) case. I point to again, in the hockey world, eklund's hockeybuzz. That guy is supporting his family and getting into press conferences all across North America off... basically, pretending to be an NHL insider for so long that people actually started believing he was despite having a 3-4% success rate on any "news" or "rumours" he posted.
This clown is sullying an awesome name. Please don't think all Aces are such enormous frauds.
...Aces:
- Ace Ventura
- Ace Frehley
- ???
August 2nd, 2011 at 10:14 AM ^
ACE Hardware
August 2nd, 2011 at 11:24 AM ^
Please don't think all Aces are such enormous frauds.
Ace ain't in charge no more. He's upstairs takin' a bath.
How's Gary?
just like Jon Edwards.
August 2nd, 2011 at 11:33 AM ^
Dear lord.
Look, worst case, he's a guy on the internet making things up under an assumed identity. This being the internet, I don't don't see how this is novel, shocking, or worthy of any sort of outrage. I think this very blog has a tag entitled "Rumor-mongering is what the internet is for". Well, he's rumor-mongering. Devoting numerous posts to him does nothing more than spread awareness of his presence (without people doing it, I'd be ignorant of his existence).
If he's not credible, do like you do to the 97% of the internet: ignore him. I don't really understand these arguments that he is "hurting Michigan football" - and no, "not getting a 24/7 site" doesn't rank. By nonsensically claiming that Andrus Peat is a silent commit? What does that do? I have more of a problem with what he did to Kellen Jones, but that's not behavior that wasn't mirrored by at least 10 people on this very site.
In short, I don't understand this tempest in a teapot. He's a guy on the internet making shit up. Who cares.