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That this furor took aim at a bogeyman like Valizadeh, whose pre-eminence appears to exist chiefly in his own head, is in many ways besides the point. People cared, and in an age when “people caring” is the only true barometer of newsworthiness, we were left with an unwinnable puzzle.

Valizadeh had done nothing to earn or deserve the sort of public platform we were giving him. By all accounts, in fact, he had done nothing but manipulate the media to his whims — a pattern that continued during the scheduling of the so-called “press conference,” whose participants he screened and whose location he refused to disclose until an hour prior.

But it was the biggest digital culture story of the week — albeit one that we covered reluctantly — and it was happening in our back yard.

The press conference was arranged like an undergraduate seminar, with eight reporters sitting around a table and Valizadeh standing at its head.

He chose the Dupont Circle-area hotel, he said, because he used to take women there when he wanted to sleep with them.

You have made me one of the most famous men in the world … I’m gonna work with what you gave me.

Before the press conference started, Valizadeh asked each reporter which outlet they represented and singled a few out for criticism, including Vice, which he said had started printing “garbage” since its acquisition, and the Daily Beast, whom he accused of being a “CIA front.”

He also delayed the start of the conference for several minutes while a group of five to six men in the back mic’d him — but not the assembled reporters — and set up cameras. (This had the effect of muting the reporters on the resulting video footage.) These men, whom reporters were told not to photograph, purportedly consisted of some mix of bodyguards and fans; they sniggered loudly at Valizadeh’s laugh lines and oversaw a video feed that streamed the “conference” live to viewers on Twitter, Periscope and YouTube.