Guyism » Business

6 of the most awful Super Bowl ads ever

Chris Spags — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 13:00:21 +0000

Since we crank out so many stories each week some really good ones get lost in the cracks. And since so many new people visit Guyism every day (thank you), we thought we’d take some time on the weekends and holidays to share a few classics that many of our newer readers may have missed.

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Making a good Super Bowl commercial is hard. It takes months, if not years, of planning and research to make people remember your company’s ad. Conversely, 30 seconds of awfulness can make people remember you too, but for all the wrong reasons. Here are seven ads which definitely fall into the latter category.

6 Christopher Reeve walking – Nuveen Investments, 2000
In 2000, paralyzed former Superman star Christopher Reeve “appeared” in this commercial. The message was that in the future, a whole lot of crazy crap is going to happen. Including, apparently, Christopher Reeve’s head being grafted to the body of a giant.

The goal of the commercial was to touch the hearts of Americans everywhere. Instead, everyone just kind of went, “Uh, that was creepy” and awkwardly took a bite out of their chicken wings. Oh also no one had any clue what Nuveen Investments did either because the commercial was really vague and almost made Nuveen Investments seem like an evil corporation from the future. Probably like the one that made Robocop.

5 Meet the official Holiday Inn transsexual – Holiday Inn, 1997
The gist of this commercial was that being a man getting a sex change was basically what Holiday Inn was doing to their hotels. Why this would make you want to stay there, no one was really sure, but if it’s good enough for Seinfeld’s Kenny Banya, it’s good enough for me.

The commercial was universally disliked and even resulted in some boycotts from various gay/transsexual/transgender groups. Probably not even for the hurtful depiction of their people, but rather for the tremendous slap in the face of being compared to a Holiday Inn.

4 White guys hunt down Kenyan, give him shoes – Just for Feet, 1999
There are few situations in which white men hunting down a black guy is going to make for a nicely received ad. This ad falls in line with that bold theorem on my part.

The premise if you’re too lazy to click: A Kenyan guy is walking around, being barefoot and Kenyan when some white guys in a Hummer drug him, capture him, then put sneakers on him. Eventually, he gets up all wobbly and runs, trying to free himself from these strange objects on his feet. The ad was so poorly received that it got a feature story on how bad it was on Salon.com, got the ad agency behind it sued (Saatchi & Saatchi, the agency in question, would countersue for Just for Feet’s ineptitude), and had a hand in Just for Feet’s bankruptcy later that year. So yeah, that turned out well.

3 Lemmings – Apple, 1985
In 1984, Apple had what some have called the most amazing commercial ever with their cleverly titled ad “1984”, a name which no one has ever been able to decipher the meaning of. Amidst pressure to possibly match that ad, they came up with another artistic bizarre ad that, well, sucked. Hard.

The commercial was so poorly reviewed that Apple stayed away from Super Bowl ads until 1999. And to make the indignities suffered to viewers worse, this is the one Apple commercial that has a bunch of people dying gruesome deaths, yet Justin Long and his smug Mac-loving face are nowhere to be found. Bastards.

2 Salesgenie.com and their racist panda bears – Salesgenie.com, 2008
After a 2007 Super Bowl ad universally rated as the worst one of the year, Salesgenie.com came back determined to make more awful ads that would stick with viewers for being so awful. Seriously, they even distributed a press release about it. Well they can wipe their hands thusly because this certainly proved to be a job well done.

It may shock you to learn that this ad never ran again amidst protests from Asian groups for A) Being racist and B) Finding a way to make pandas seem utterly annoying (do you know how hard that is? Look at this guy!). Also I fail to see how pandas could be running a profitable business, particularly when it’s a business selling furniture made of their favorite food. I’d find myself wholly incapable of selling Hamburger Chairs so it wouldn’t be fair to expect more from my cartoon pandas.

1 Fred Astaire dances with vacuums – Dirt Devil, 1997
I don’t think this was the first in the tacky “Dead Guy Sells Product” type of ads, but it was definitely one of the earlier ones. And what better way to honor probably the only masculine dancer ever than by putting a vacuum in his hands.

The commercial itself was cool in the sense that, hey, Fred Astaire is vacuuming but he’s been dead for ten years without the powers of voodoo or zombification. But it was probably less cool in the fact that Fred Astaire was notoriously protective of his image, to the point that he never allowed anyone to recreate his life for film, famously saying “However much they offer me – and offers come in all the time – I shall not sell,” including a clause in his will indicating as much. But vacuuming isn’t a recreation of his life so basically… in your face, famous dead guy!

Twitter buys Tweetdeck, better not mess with something good

Will Brinson — Mon, 02 May 2011 22:00:40 +0000

Tweetdeck is universally regarded as the best Twitter client. Unfortunately, Twitter just bought Tweetdeck for $40-50 million.

At least that’s the according to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, who reports that it includes “both cash and Twitter stock.”

Now, you might be asking, “Why is this unfortunate?” Well, it’s only unfortunate if Twitter changes anything.

And it’s likely they will. But for the moment, Tweetdeck is fantastic because it allows users to run multiple accounts in the background, get alerted when they’re mentioned, set their own speed and time for seeing updates, sort who they’re following more neatly, and a slew of other things that are absolutely must-have if you use Twitter, in my opinion.

Twitter’s going to likely want to do a couple things. 1) Make money off Tweetdeck and 2) continue trying to get people to use Twitter products.

The good news, then, is that they own Tweetdeck. There are some issues with non-Twitter-owned products and their API access that becomes problematic some times, and so if Tweetdeck’s under the Twitter umbrella, things are a lot “safer” for users of the software.

But Twitter might have actually purchased the software in order to keep UberMedia, who Twitter hates, from getting Tweetdeck and then having everyone leave Twitter’s native apps (except for “Twitter for iPhone” which is actually good, although Twitter didn’t make it, sigh).

And that scares me — if Twitter’s just buying Tweetdeck to be on the defensive, do they really have the user experience in mind? Because it sounds more like they’ve got their own safety and greed in mind. That’s cool; we live in a capitalistic world. But I don’t want no one messing with my Tweetdeck.

The other issue — money — might be more problematic. There have been concerns that Twitter can’t justify its valuation because they can’t figure out any way to make money off of the product. Sure, billions (I think it’s billions; worst case it’s hundreds of millions or something) of people use Twitter. It’s a great, fun product for many different reasons.

And lots of people use Tweetdeck and prefer it as their client. But if Twitter is hell-bent on making that $50 million back, then there’s a good chance that Tweetdeck could become cluttered with ads. Imagine if you fired up Tweetdeck and there was a column that was entirely dedicated to “promoted trends,” like the new version of Twitter for iPhone has at the top.

Or if some interstitial ad popped up every ten minutes reminding you to use J.G. Wentworth – I want those advertisers to die a slow death, in case you didn’t know – to GET CAAAAASH NOW!

That’d be brutal. Sure it might result in some accidental clicks and make Twitter some money, but it would hog user’s computer memory, and it would cheapen the user’s ability to enjoy the experience.

Which is why if you’re a fan of Tweetdeck, you probably shouldn’t be celebrating Twitter’s decision to drop invest just quite yet.

New company cleans up after your drunken mess, buys you burritos

Chris Spags — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 20:47:04 +0000

It’s our duty to point out and salute people who come up with a crafty idea. Today, we applaud two former University of Colorado students for their company, Hangover Helpers, who’ll help you sort out your life the day after a drunken mess of a situation.

Alex Vere-Nicoll and Marc Simons will come to any Boulder, Colorado-area home and help take care of you the day after any raucous party.

The duo brings over Gatorade, breakfast burritos, and assists in cleaning up the house with the goal of getting it back in the shape it was in prior to the party. All at the cost of $15 per roommate in the house.

Simons informally started the company when he was still going to Colorado for undergrad, deciding it’d be a good way to make money on the side.

After trying unsuccessfully to find jobs in the crappy market after graduation, the duo made the company official and are hoping to get things moving. They told Colorado’s Daily Camera they expect business to get more solid when Spring, and its subsequent party season, rolls back around.

So, hey, if you’re in the Colorado area and want to use their services, you can check their site or Facebook page.

While this is a cool idea and all, I’ve got to question the price point. $15 seems really reasonable, but I’d wager that some times, there’s a lot more effort involved than they get in return for that little money, even with tips. Getting $45 from three roommates sounds like a great idea in theory, but much less good when you’re having to chop up hooker parts and explain to police why a frat house would need five vats of lye and sign out front that says “No Hookers Killed Here in 0 Days.”

CU-Boulder grads start ‘Hangover Helpers’ business [Daily Camera]

Verizon bills dead guy, won’t allow daughter to cancel

Chris Spags — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:00:15 +0000

In a tough economy, businesses have to do what they can to squeeze every last penny out of all of us, unfortunately. But what they do to you and me hardly compares to what happened to the daughter of a recently deceased man: She fought for months to get her father’s Verizon service canceled because, even though she mailed a death certificate, they needed her father’s PIN number.

Cynthia Lacy of Treasure Island could hardly believe a customer service representative at Verizon refused to disconnect her father’s telephone service.

Lacy sent the phone company a death certificate, showing her father, Bill Young of Calvin, W.Va., died in June. But not until repeated phone calls and a complaint to the media did Verizon finally cut it off — last week.

It seems Lacy did not have her father’s PIN (personal identification number) to access the account. So the representative refused to help her.

“Well, there’s nothing else I can do for you,” the representative said before laughing and hanging up the phone.

“This is wrong,” a frustrated Lacy said. “I’ve already sent them the death certificate.”

Fortunately, she got help from her local TV station to get through to Verizon and get the situation sorted out (they offered her credit back as of September. Gee, thanks guys). I get having corporate policies and whatever to make sure you’re not getting defrauded, but there has to be some flexibility going on. I’m surprised Verizon didn’t insist that she make her father do a limbo dance like it was “Weekend at Bernie’s” to prove the situation was legitimate. That’s the difficult thing about losing a loved one; every time you think you’re ready to move on, somebody insists you string him or her up like a marionette and make them dance the Lambada.

Pinellas woman’s Verizon fight shows why PINs should be shared [TampaBayOnline]

Blankets and pillows cost $8 now on American Airlines

Chris Spags — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:41:27 +0000

Just in case your rage finally subsided over the majority of airlines charging you for bringing luggage, here’s a new bit of fun: Starting May 1, all American Airlines flights will be charging $8 if you’d like a blanket and pillow. Way to go, airline industry!

Chilly on the plane? Bring a sweater, or $8 for a blanket-and-pillow pack, if you’re on a domestic American Airlines flight.

On May 1, the carrier will begin charging for a pillow and blanket set on all domestic flights, as well as those to or from Canada, Mexico, Hawaii, the Caribbean and Central America, according to American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith.

The $8 charge buys a blue fleece blanket and an inflatable neck pillow that fliers can use in flight and keep for future use.

“American evaluates all aspects of the business to ensure that economic decisions are prudent and strategic for the long-term success of the company,” Smith said in an e-mail announcing the decision.

Will there be an increase in quality of the products? Probably not, unless not getting some previous flyer’s skin flakes and body fluid is worth eight bucks to you.

So, first, meals were taken away (boo). Then they started charging some overweight people for two seats (meh). Then they started charging for luggage (double boo). Then some airlines added Internet (yay) though most airliners are charging reasonable to obscene amounts for it (boo). You may think, “Well, I never liked the pillow or blanket anyway so, whatever, there’s nothing left to charge me for.” And you would be correct. Up until Continental decides that you should pay for the privilege of having seats. Really, we’re just getting closer and closer to having our air travel conducted roughly like a slave ship for the same prices. Personally, I’d pay the extra $20 to not be tight packed.

American Airlines to stop offering free blankets on domestic flights [CNN]

Quote of the Day

Chris Spags — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:47:20 +0000

Some of you guys may not be as ardent media followers as I am, but an interesting bit of news today is that Newsday.com will move to a subscriber model next week, charging $5/week for their content. The quotes in the story kind of amused me…they’re after the jump, along with my thoughts.

Beginning Wednesday, most of Newsday.com content will only be available to subscribers of Optimum Online, Newsday, or those willing to pay for it.

Those who are not customers of Optimum Online or the newspaper – both owned by Bethpage-based Cablevision Systems Corp. – will have to pay a $5 weekly fee. However, nonpaying customers will have access to some of newsday.com’s information, including the home page, school closings, weather, obituaries, classified and entertainment listings. There also will be some limited access to Newsday stories.

“We are excited about this model because in addition to a unique ability to immediately reach about 75 percent of Long Island households, we believe the hyper-local approach is right for Long Island,” said Debby Krenek, Newsday managing editor and senior vice president/digital.

The new strategy comes as newspapers have been scrambling to replace the advertising-based model after years of steep revenue decline. Charging viewers for online content has been debated in the newspaper industry in the past few years.

Jack Myers of Jack Myers Media Business Report, a Manhattan-based economic research firm, said, “In the long term, it’s a zero-sum game. Basically what you are doing is you are shutting off younger audiences from getting access and becoming fans of your content, so it strikes me as a pretty short-term protective measure that will be a great case study for the industry.”

So it makes sense (why do we pay for everything on earth but content?), but here’s the problem..it’s only one site doing it. If every newspaper in the Associated Press did that, then people would have to take notice. But being the first is pretty rough. There is literally nothing on Long Island I would pay $5/week for. I see no reason why that logic would change in a digital age.

That said, where will I go now for my coverage of Zubaz pants, guys named Joey, and teased hair?

[Newsday]

The recession will not affect MY urination

Chris Spags — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:52:58 +0000

Many businesses have to make cutbacks to save money when no money is coming in. But asking me to do things for you? Not likely, Bathroom Sign.

I’m fine with you keeping your job but I’m not okay with putting in more effort in your bathroom. I already have to flush the toilet and wash my hands (theoretically)…this other work ain’t happening. It’s a slipper slope. What next, I have to serve my own water? Or, even worse, serve it out of the toilet? You give Big Business an inch, they take a mile.

I would however be willing to flick the light on and off repeatedly as I leave. You damn kids never learn to shut up otherwise.

[image via]

Domino's is sorry for those assholes

Chris Spags — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:05:44 +0000

By now you have to have seen the video of two Domino’s employees doing all sorts of awful things to food. And apparently, those two have now been arrested. So Domino’s has issued an apology that kind of made me laugh and I’m not sure why.

I know you’re the President and this is your business and whatever. But it seems kind of silly to get so worked up over the “hard work” of 125,000 people who…are making magical combinations of bread, cheese, and sauce and ultimately contributing to the fatlaziness of millions of Americans each day like they’re out curing cancer or ending world hunger. Don’t get me wrong, I love cheesy bread as much as the next guy, but if my passion in life were teenage assholes and their Heatwave bags, I’d probably want to stab myself in the eye with a breadstick.

Also what if I ordered farts on my salami or boogers on my cheese? Where am I supposed to get my contaminated deliciousness now? Not Domino’s, apparently. So I guess this is where my highly successful run of pizza fetish videos meets its untimely end.

[via]

Pimp pays teenage prostitute with McNuggets

Chris Spags — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:19:05 +0000

Many have echoed the sentiments behind the expression “Pimpin’ ain’t easy.” Well, apparently it is, presuming you have enough chicken nuggets (up until the going to jail part).

An Australian man who pimped a 16-year-old schoolgirl paid her with chicken nuggets for having sex with men, a court has been told.

Ronald Vikash Gander, 27, and his 16-year-old girlfriend devised a plan to prostitute a teenage girl so they could afford the weekly $1,050 rent on a serviced inner-Brisbane apartment, the Brisbane District Court was told.

The court was told the girl made $4,500 for having sex with five middle-aged men in June last year.

Gander and his girlfriend used the money for living expenses and paid the girl nothing except for the occasional box of chicken nuggets.

The court was told Gander’s girlfriend – who cannot be named – threatened the student, who had run away from home, with eviction if she didn’t continue having sex with clients to earn her keep.

Judge Marshall Irwin described the prostitution offences as “sordid”.

“The girl was used as if she was a piece of meat … and your conduct can properly be described as that of a sleaze merchant,” Judge Irwin said.

I can understand why the Judge is so disappointed. If you can’t expect first class employment and professionalism from a pimp who turns out girls who should still be studying calculus, then what hope does the rest of the world? Every time I see a pimp strutting down the street in a technicolor dream coat and a cane befitting a 1930s archaeologist, I always think, “Oh man, this guy must be a CEO or important person in the business community. He would certainly not sell teenage girls for sex and then feed them Chicken McNuggets.” So yeah, I guess you can say I relate to the judge.

What a great ad for McNuggets though. They’re so delicious that you’ll give up your cooch and dignity for them. I’d like to see McDonald’s make this happen in an ad, ideally with Birdie being turned out by Grimace. It practically writes itself!

[via]

Flight attendant does porn, employer says, "Cool"

Chris Spags — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:30:36 +0000

Flight attendants look like lemurs or grandmas now, so it’s encouraging to find one that apparently is attractive enough to warrant pornographic film of her. But even more surprising is that the company who employs her is like, “Hey sure, why not.”

You can fly her “friendly skies” for the right price. “Friendly skies” being a euphemism for “disease ridden womb,” naturally.

A BUDGET airline stewardess will keep her job despite being exposed as a part-time porn star.

Ryanair hostess Edita Schindlerova, 22, secretly appears on X-rated websites posing as Edita Bente, reports The Sun.

But airline bosses have supported Miss Schindlerova, despite appearing in graphic photos showing her having sex with a mystery man.

“What people do before or after they work for us is their business,” a Ryanair spokesman told The Sun.

That is so true, who cares what you do after hours? Like when I’m all coked up and drunk and call my bosses after hours from a fake phone number while pretending to have kidnapped their kids and and sold them into the sex trade it’s like, so what, does it really affect my ability to do work? And the answer is “yes” but with an addendum of “But f you.” So that’s pretty much like a no.

[source]

Talking to women is hard :(

Chris Spags — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:07:35 +0000

It may shock you to learn that the purveyors of video games working at Gamestop may not be the most adept at talking to women. Fortunately, there are training videos to teach them about that.

The most important lesson I extracted from the video is that “women don’t like being condescended to or ignored.” That’s basically counterintuitive to everything I’ve ever learned about women. Like when a woman says something, I usually go, “Yeah okay, what, did your VAGINA tell you to say that?” Then I exchange a limp high five with my male friends and go back to discussing whether or not you could see Zelda’s cooch in a freeze frame of Super Smash Bros. She loves it when you look at her like that and she’s better than real women because she doesn’t bleed from her vagina every couple days. Yuckyyyyyyy!!!

[via]

UPDATED: Papa John’s heart-shaped pizza is a lie

Chris Spags — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:02:02 +0000

See below for an update on Papa John’s corporate honesty FAIL

As I recently pointed out on my Twitter (you’re missing out if you’re not following me), Papa John’s is advertising a heart-shaped pizza for all the lovers out there who are too poor or fat to do anything nice for Valentine’s Day. Turns out that, once again, pizza is just lying to you.

Now that really doesn’t look like a heart to me. In fact, it looks like they’re charging you the same price as a regular pizza for a “heart-shaped pizza” that basically is just a pizza missing a slice and looks vaguely like Pac Man vomiting. Which is either the most brilliant or most soulless marketing endeavor either. And isn’t that really what Valentine’s Day is all about? Well, that and guilting your partner into trying anal for the first time. Unless you’re a gay couple…then, well, I guess you already have it all. Sniff. Gay love…so beautiful.

[image via, as seen on]

UPDATE: Thank you to Papa John’s corporate employee Ashley Rumsey Hamilton for pretending to be a Papa John’s consumer in my comments and posting a link to an image of a perfect heart-shaped pizza. That’s totally cool to attempt to deceive potential consumers to make up for your sad attempt at making a heart pizza.

As you can see above, Ashley’s IP address is coming from the corporate offices of Papa John’s, based out of Louisville, Kentucky. Now I’m not a master detective in spite of my fancy hat and smoking pipe, but it seems as though Ashley may not be a completely disinterested party.

If you want to dispute the quality of the pizza, then fine. But come on, let’s not try to pretend you’re not an employee of the stupid company I’m making fun of. To all the marketers and PR people, if you’re going to attempt to leave a fake comment, at least use a proxy. Or send me money and I’ll make believe your product is cool. Either way.

Quote of the Day

Chris Spags — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:07:50 +0000

This article kind of bored me but the quote amused me. Megan sounds like a saucy little minx.

Last year my 26-year-old assistant asked me to write her a recommendation for business school. I was happy to help. For two years, Megan had worked around the clock, or so it surely felt to her, bringing insight to my work and order to my life.

And so when I sat down to compose my letter to the school that had become her number one choice, my goal was to convey praise of the highest order, the kind that wouldn’t fail to impress prototypical Powers That Be.

At last, the right words struck me. “No matter what the request,” I wrote, “Megan’s answer is always yes.”

[via]

Indian call center guy stalks customer

Chris Spags — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:00:14 +0000

Some creepy Indian guy at a call center (stunner that such things exist, who knew) has been harassing a British chick via texts. And they’re all hilariously quoted below!

When 24-year-old Jane gave her mobile phone number to the BT call center worker so she could be texted while her landline was set up, she presumably thought she was getting a good personal service.

However within minutes of handing her number over, the shocked 24-year-old found herself on the receiving end of a barrage of text-messages, peppered with kisses and telling her she had a ‘wonderful voice’.

After making the appointment she was puzzled when he rang back and asked where she worked and what she doing that day.

She said: ‘I told him I was unpacking due to the move but then realised there was something very odd and tried to get him off the line as quickly as possible.’

Two hours later he sent a disturbing text which read: ‘Hello, Hemant this side with whom you spoke two hours ago regarding ur BT order.

‘U must be thinking dat why I called u up second time without any reason of the call but to be honest I got attracted towards u and ur wonderful voice.

‘Can I be ur friend?’

However, throughout the day she received a further five messages from the call centre worker who it is understood had finished his shift.

One read: ‘As precious as u r to me, as precious only few can ever be, I know all frnds r hard to choose, But u r someone i Never Want To Lose.

‘Take care X X X.’

He also wrote: ‘Relationship is not a business where u give when u get.

‘It’s a beautiful feeling for someone, where u like to give even if u don’t get X X X.’

Jane added: ‘The messages were inappropriate and very creepy. I felt violated and became very worried.’

They ended up paying her 250 pounds for the inconvenience, which is probably a pretty sweet deal. The last time I got inappropriately propositioned by an Indian guy, all I got was the smell of curry on my skin and a whole lot of regret.

Honestly is there anything good that comes out of Indian call centers? They help no one, they have an awful understanding of the language and how to help you, and they only make you give up and continue to have the same problem. This just gets me so worked up that I’m going to punch the next Indian person I see in the face. He’ll probably be a nice guy but f him, that’s what he gets for being different.

[source]

Fraudulent psychics and phone companies screwing you on text messages

Chris Spags — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:12:40 +0000

So I hope Jesus’s birthday was wonderful for you all. It was less so for me because, after buying seemingly 700 million gifts, I’m now giving handjobs on the street corner for reasonable rates. Tis the season!

Psychic fails at..psychic..ness

Pro tip: Don’t be specific with your cold reading guesses when you’re a ugly old lady pretending to be a psychic.

This is totally why I failed at being a psychic too. I’d go to do a reading where I’m in touch with the dead and then I’d be like, “I bet your husband’s death was a tragic one…WAS IT MARSHMALLOWS? DID HE DIE IN A VAT OF MARSHMALLOWS? I BET IT WAS MARSHMALLOWS.” Sure, it was a correct guess one out of the first ten thousand times, but it didn’t do much for my psychic street cred.

Phone companies f’ing you on text messages

It may be a shocker to learn that major corporations are f’ing you everywhere you go. Well, add another confirmation on that fact to the list: It costs you .20 for every text you send. It costs cell providers approximately 0 dollars. And 0 cents.

Telcos are ripping you off. If you are surprised by this, you may also be interested in some prime real estate I have for sale. It’s on the Moon.

But just because we all know that we are being scammed doesn’t make the manner of the sting any less interesting. A piece in the New York Times goes into some detail on the cost of text messages to the cell carriers and concludes that it is close to zero. An SMS doesn’t even take any bandwidth away from the regular channels which carry calls:

That’s why a message is so limited in length: it must not exceed the length of the message used for internal communication between tower and handset to set up a call. The channel uses space whether or not a text message is inserted.

I never thought this would be possible but, with this news, apparently the text photos I send women of my penis are somehow worth less than I had originally valuated them at. The cost-benefit analysis of this really makes me realize that, not only is my business model foolish, but frankly, it’ll never be profitable. But sometimes you have to take a hit financially to get your message out there. Really, it’s the closest thing to charity that I do.

This is the worst business offer I've ever received

Chris Spags — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 20:00:11 +0000

I get a lot of crapty emails of stuff from this site. I like getting emails offering partnerships and ads and whatever, those are awesome. What I don’t like…business opportunities based around fat people copulating.

Hello webmaster,

This is Michael from Largefriends.com. I wonder if you are interested in running your own BBW=big beautiful woman dating site or work-at-home business. We would like to work with you setting up Dating Site for plus-size Singles.

We can set it up for you at no cost if you have strong interest in this field or work-at-home business. You can pick the name for your own BBW (big beautiful women) dating site, own the domain and brand. We take care of all the backend and engineering work. Also customer service work,

You don’t have to worry that no one exists at your BBW dating site at the beginning. Your site will share hundreds of thousands of profiles with other BBW sites we have already set up. Your users can immediately contact hundreds of thousands of other deaf users once they register at your BBW dating site.

You can earn money if you can get users registering at your dating site.
It is easy to get users visiting your BBW dating site by doing the followings:

1. Invite friends, friends of your friends to visit it;
2. Write blogs on popular sites promoting it;
3. Create friend circle on some social networking sites to get to know more friends.;
4. Use business card, fly sheet to promote it when joining social activities;

…
For more details, please email me at largefriendsmarketing@gmail.com or go to the below information link:

http://www.largefriends.com/private_label

If you are interested, please let me know.

Thank you for your consideration and I am looking forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely
Michael
marketing manager

http://www.largefriends.com

I’m hard pressed to top the level of absurdity emanating from this proposal, but I can try. There is absolutely no situation in which I want to assist in helping the obese procreate. And while I think the site name “Large Friends” is fairly adorable and sounds vaguely like a kids’ cartoon about a hippo and a giraffe beginning a lifelong friendship based around wacky antics and a love of leaves, I would never want to attach my personal brand to such an endeavor. And what self-respecting pig would go on a site promoting themselves to either chubby chasers or equally gaseous individuals?

Put it this way: I’d rather “invest” in a new business venture that involves a 24/7 camera watching me masturbate until my penis turns into a lifeless shred of chewed up pork than spend my days wondering if one Beluga whale can distance himself from the vat of onion rings long enough to fingerf some other Beluga whale.

When it's 2AM, you…

Chris Spags — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:00:11 +0000

It seems like there’s been a real mainstream rise in creative defacement of advertising. For example…

If there’s been an ad promoting telecommunications and sodomy together that isn’t a complete delight, I haven’t seen it. Telus would be wise to integrate this into their campaigns. Finally anal sex lovers, we have a phone! I mean you. You have a phone. You.