PoPville has established itself as Washington’s leading platform for anonymous white property owners to embarrass themselves, but it’s not without its critics. So many in fact, that criticism of the neighborhood blog and its princely proprietor, Dan Silverman, has become its own local genre, with salvos shot across several mediums. Let’s rank them! After all, as the Simpson’s line goes: It’s very easy to criticize. Fun, too!

13  Make a Dan Silverman sticker that says Duke of Douche and slap it on the front of a stop sign in Bloomingdale

It’s not the most clever approach, and Stuck in DC doesn’t endorse slapping street stickers to the front of signs, but you have to give these “cool kids” some credit, because they really got under the Prince’s skin.  

12  Write something critical in the PoPville comments section

Ha! Good luck. Silverman is the city’s sultan of censorship, famed for deleting any comments that don’t jibe with his enthusiastic views of the city and its changes. And he has the trigger-happiest banhammer in town. Making a critical comment on PoPville is like slapping a Duke of Douche sticker on a sign in the Golden Triangle; it’s going to get removed before anyone knows it was there.

11  Tweet a particularly PoPpy PoPville post with the caption “Peak PoPville”

Repeat as necessary.

10  Showcase various ways of criticizing PoPville

Oooo, meta.

9  Start a column where you point out every PoPville post that wouldn’t be if a phone call had just been made

It’s not too late! So long as there’s scuttlebutt, this is a good idea. I mean, Joe’s Crab Shack, John’s Snow Crab, whatever, it’s going to be a crab place, okay?

8  Vote with your mouse and just stop going to PoPville

That’s hard though. How else are you going to stay one step ahead of the Chinese terrorist cell lurking in your local movie theater?

7  Tweet this

6  Play on the name Prince of Petworth

We’re fans of Knave of North Cleveland Park, but the best part of this feature is the Freedian lead in: Dan Silverman, the author of popular restaurant-evangelizing and pet-photo-collecting blog PoPville

5  Write a think piece about the commenters

And use it as a vehicle to insert subtly scathing lines like: PoPville’s publisher, Dan Silverman, rarely adds his own editorial voice to his voluminous posts, whether they concern flashy retail openings or grim reminders of urban life. Also to pimp the Prince for decamping to a neighborhood west of Rock Creek Park.

4  Dear PooPvillainville, Should I call 311, 911, or wage a relentless campaign of poop jokes and abstruse memes across multiple online mediums for years and years?

You’re doing the lord’s work, monkeyrotica.

3  Report on PoPville

Use your well-established local column or your position as a Washington-Area-Blog-Editor to cover PoPville’s instant reader classics like they’re real news.

2  Create your own neighborhood blog parodying PoPville’s urban inanity, then transition into a real site that displays greater journalistic integrity than your subject

RIP Titan of Trinidad

1  Record a rock n’ roll song

There was never any doubt about #1. Jack on Fire’s PoPville slam piece, Gotta Get That Silver, Man, is high local art, at once a scathing critique of PoPville’s racist and classist overtones and a catchy-as-fuck rock song with killer riffs. It’s two and a half dancy minutes of compact hate and I can’t get it out of my head.

Good shit:

Thinks he’s a prince
but he’s a jester
for realty kings
and their investors
a cheerleader of displacement
a ringmaster of desk top racists

And:

Welcome to the beautiful life
but only if you can pay the price
and if you cant, well so long
today you’re home
tomorrow you’re gone!

Jack on Fire’s forthcoming album WE SASS YOU SHAKE YR ASS is available December 4. I can’t wait.