I know how fascinating you all find navel-gazing posts about this site, so I’ll keep this one as brief as possible. I had been mulling over the possibility of ditching my long-time web host, GoDaddy, for some time. I’ve put up with too many unexplained outages, too many experiences with less-than-helpful support staff, and most importantly too many years of site load times that made me pine for the days of dial-up.

What finally gave me the nudge I needed to pull the trigger, if you’ll pardon the expression, was the recent dust-up over GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons shooting an elephant in Zimbabwe and turning it into a crass photo/video op. He can try to make it look like an act of charity or mercy all he wants, but one look at those photos and that video left me with no doubt that this was about one thing above all else — a rich, American white man engaging in some good old-fashioned dick swinging.

Let me just say here that I’m not a huge animal rights zealot, nor am I opposed to hunting for food. I’m certainly not about to wag my finger at Africans for providing for themselves. My problem is with Parsons, who apparently fancies himself a modern day Ernest Hemingway. He not only has a colossal ego but is woefully out of touch. As Jamie Johnson at Vanity Fair wrote so well:

The heroism of rich white men shooting elephants, Parsons failed to recognize, is a romantic colonial notion the world rejected long ago.

So all this is to say that for all of the reasons listed above, I am now hosting The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit with HostGator. While I’m sure GoDaddy won’t miss the relative pittance they earned from me, I know I won’t miss them. Now if Brent Oxley (HostGator founder and CEO) can just avoid recording himself blasting white rhinos, I’ll be a happy customer.

Related articles

• GoDaddy CEO Shoots Elephant, Sparks Stampede Of Customers To Flee (consumerist.com)
• GoDaddy Boycott Raises $20,000 For Elephant Charity (businessinsider.com)
• GoDaddy Competitors Move In For the Kill (crenshawcomm.com)