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It would be in poor taste to complain about the fact that our Holiday Party is on a Thursday this year, so I’m not going to do that. I mean, I get it. It’s cheaper, easier to find a spot to reserve and people can’t use the out of town excuse on a Thursday. Sure, Friday will be hilariously pointless, but at least you didn’t call in sick.
You know, there’s even an argument that having an office riddled with hungover buffoons is a team building exercise. Misery loves company, and you don’t seriously know someone until you’ve seen them unable to put together a coherent sentence in a place of business.
Enjoy this gem from the funny people over at Fast Comedy, and keep your pants on at the party this year..
Respond
Jimmy Valmer would be so d-d-d-disappointed in you.
It’s sad how disappointed I am at this. This is the one site I still come to daily, mainly because it’s populated with people with the same problems I have.
Ads are fine; sell as much space as you want. But you should know that your readers aren’t stupid, and can easily identify sponsored content. Trying to disguise the ad or plug with a half-hearted 2-3 sentence lede and a lukewarm recommendation is disingenuous and insulting to our intelligence.
Nobody on here will fault you one bit for selling out (I will absolutely jump at my first chance to do so). Make that money. Suntrackers don’t buy themselves. But please at least respect us enough to not start “hiding” sponsored articles in with the good content we’ve come to expect.
Unless your goal is to pander to the lowest common denominator. As my mom always said, I’m not mad, just disappointed.
End rant.
Maybe we should just start berating the intern like they do at TFM
Appreciate the concern, but this wasn’t sponsored. If it was, it would say “Sponsored Content.” We’ve posted their videos before, and they forwarded this to us yesterday along with the embed code. We watched it, thought it was relevant to our readers and funny, so we posted it. The only thing we received for posting was the traffic driven to the site.
Oh. Well then. I’ll go sit in the corner now.
I will fault them for selling out. I remember when PGP came out and it was quite original. This was around the same time TFM began to slip. I hung around both for a while. Now, I only stop by if I have nothing better to do.
I know what you mean, but if I spent years building a brand like this I would definitely monetize it. It is a business, after all. The key is to do so in a way that’s consistent with the values of your company.
Sites like these, which are aimed at a relatively small demographic, have to build a loyal following to survive. And pulling crap like this will end up alienating a big chunk of loyal readers. Or maybe it’s just me. TFM can probably survive by catering to high schoolers who grew up overloaded with ads, but there’s not really a replacement demographic for PGP.
Sorry for the book, but the last few South Park episodes have me thinking about this a lot.
Tl;dr: You can either be Grandex or Buzzfeed, not both.