I’ll be honest. I don’t like Michael Arrington. He’s a dick, and he likes to boast about his death threats like it’s some sort of moose he hangs on the wall.

See that? My favorite tech dudes who doesn’t swear a lot (if at all) goes into rage mode because he has a loaner unit rather than a purchased unit, and Arrington goes into jounalistic-ethics-fly-out-the-window mode when he not-very-subtly implies this influences Leo Laporte’s opinion over the Pre. Seriously? Other than saying “I got this for free”, I don’t see what’s the problem with that. You have to return it. You’re not being bribed, you’re not keeping it. I don’t see the fuss.

Then of course, Leo dropped the f-bomb. He cut the live stream. Sheesh, that was nuts.

I never liked Techcrunch. I’ve seen too many Web 2.0 blogs, and the only one I read from time to time is Mashable. And Arrington likes to go around saying, “I’m a millionaire! This Web 2.0 site is going to fail! It’s not even out yet!” And VCs, who are dependent on TC’s “analysis”, will immediately deny funding for a perfectly good startup just because Arrington likes to say how much it sucks. Then there were the death threats.

Look, I don’t like death threats. Nobody does. So you say, “I got a death threat. Some guy said he would slice my head.” Fine. Whatever. But this guy obsessively likes to cover his threats. Like when he said some guy spat in his face. He totally deserved it. Well, I don’t think people should spit in your face, but still.

I don’t care what anyone says, Arrington is a dick in the startup world. I’d much rather go for Jason Calacanis. He has that startups podcast I enjoy.