Filed under: Comment
… it’s called depression and it’s a serious illness that makes people feel that way.
He wasn’t doing it for attention or to spite anyone so stop talking claptrap, embrace reality beyond your own little bubble and go say hello – then listen – to the person who you think never looks happy.
Filed under: Comment, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Crap Products In History
So I was on a plane recently, skimming through their in-flight shopping magazine when I came across this product …
Yes, it’s an alarmed ‘door wedge’, but that’s not what I found interesting, it was the description of the product and who they think it may be appropriate for …
Yes, they really are saying it is a great product for people who find sleeping alone in hotels, unnerving.
How exactly?
Are you supposed to use the wedge to keep the door slightly ajar so that you can see the ‘safe glow’ on the hotel corridor lights … even though any perverted bastard could peer in and see you sleeping.
Or maybe, despite locking and chaining your hotel door from the inside, you are supposed to put the wedge underneath the door – adding another layer of inpenatrability – even though you run the risk of a 130db alarm going off when some hotel staff member tries to shove the bill or a message under the door.
Look, I’ve stayed in some very dodgy hotels in my time.
The sort of hotels where you want an armed guard behind the door, let alone an alarmed door wedge … but even if I did have that thing when I was staying in them [example: a ‘hotel’ that cost about $2 a night, next to a train station in the seediest part of Venezuela], I don’t know if it would have given me peace of mind, especially if the bloody thing went off in the middle of the night. [Which it would have as I discovered every room key opened every room]
While I appreciate the illusion of safety is a wonderful thing, I don’t know if this actually gives it – or if it simply heightens your anxiety that something bad could happen.
Guess it simply proves that there’s nothing like fear – or sex – to sell a product.
Filed under: Comment
Over the years – despite being a massive user of it – I’ve heaped a bunch of shit on Facebook.
I think the commercial value of their ‘likes’ is massively overrated. I am fed up that they keep changing their privacy settings. I am over being served ad after ad after ad.
And yet, despite all this, I log into it copious amounts of times, each single day.
There are – without doubt – some obvious reasons for this.
I’m a nosy bastard, so like seeing what my friends are up to.
I’m a lazy bastard, so like using my friends knowledge to inform me what’s going on.
I’m a needy bastard, so feel good when people I haven’t seen or spoken to in decades, are prompted to remember me.
But recently, I was reminded just how brilliant Facebook actually is.
Many, many years ago, I knew a guy called David.
Even though I went to school with him, he was older than me by a couple of years, so I never really knew him … but many years later, we found ourselves working together as pot washers at the Nottingham Knight bar/restuarant in West Bridgford.
Whether it was the shitty job or just a meeting of minds, we struck a deep friendship quickly.
In the years I knew him, we managed to pack in a whole bunch of wonderfully stupid moments.
Though sadly – for David – they were pretty much all at his expense.
Without going into the detail that explains what the circumstances behind these stories were, here are some ‘headlines’ of those wonderfully stupid moments:
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+ Setting his arm on fire with a can of Lynx. In a pub. Full of people.
+ Making spaghetti bolognaise by dipping pasta into a bottle of Heinz Tomato sauce.
+ Being arrested for owning sexual explicit material. Even though he’d only asked the policeman for directions.
+ Having a friend [errrrm, me] send his mother a letter that resulted in her finding his stash of porn mags under his bed.
+ Breaking his nose by chasing a mates car that suddenly stopped.
+ Jokingly shouting “help” in a park, only to be heard by a passer-by, who called the Police, who sent a helicopter to try and find the perpetrator.
… no, I’m not making any of them up.
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Anyway, all this happened when I was in my teens so as our lives changed and evolved, we lost touch.
I’d always wondered what had happened to him and made some half-hearted attempts to find him – but nothing ever worked out and life just carried on.
Until a few weeks ago, when I got a ‘Facebook request’ from him.
I cannot tell you how happy this made me.
Genuinely, positively happy.
Seeing his big, gormless, Woody-Allen-meets-Slash face filled me with joy … and it reminded me how great Facebook actually is.
Sure, there are other sites out there that could have connected us up, but the fact is it was Facebook that did it. It’s almost like they’ve become the World’s biggest telephone directory … where everyone you’ve ever met can be rediscovered.
Unless they’ve gone ex-directory.
But the thing is, I’d forgotten that.
I know I shouldn’t have … but having used it for so long, Facebook role in my life had evolved into more about ‘managing’ my relationships rather than reawakening or activating them.
That’s my issue more than Facebook’s, though I do think they’ve missed an opportunity to remind us how wonderful it is to be connected, even if it’s only virtually. It’s as if they think society has moved past that stage and yet, deep down, it is a feeling that never leaves us and never stops appealing to us.
Sadly David has gone through some massive shit in the intervening years – shit that is beyond what anyone should face – but I can honestly say that Facebook has ensured he now has another mate who will be on his side to help, cheer and celebrate as he comes out the other side of the darkness.
So thanks Mark Zuckerberg, you may have founded your site for entirely different reasons, but you have proved technology doesn’t have to be purely about instant gratification, but can ignite the emotions we all need and desire as well.
If only more brands understood that, rather than treating it as either a cheap advertising platform or a sell-sell-sell tool.
Filed under: Comment
David Brent was right.
In an episode of The Office [the UK one, not the b-grade US version of the show] he said Dolly Parton was a philosopher, not just a big pair of tits [hence the title of this post] and it appears, if you look at her quote, he was right.
It would be easy to dismiss what she says as pure twaddle, but she’s right.
Of course work is important, but if we put all our effort into our job rather than the life that surrounds it, then we’re not just missing out on what life has to offer, we’re missing out on what our family can give us as well.
To be honest, I have been guilty of this in the past and have needed a swift kick in the throat to get my perspective back, but really all I need to do is go back to the value I look for when hiring a new colleague: have they lived a life, or a lifestyle?
Thanks Dolly, you’re right.
Now if only I could adopt your stance about work days being only 9 to 5.
Filed under: Comment
… even though the reality is it will probably end up being as fucked as these goats will be, when later that day, an Australian farmer pops along to pay them ‘a visit’. Ahem.