Boing Boing has had, and probably always will have, a great love for people who poke the tiger, and generally say provocative stuff. It doesn’t usually screen for whether that poking is well-advised, and failures that were trying to do or say something big are part of the site’s backbone.
Calling themselves “happy mutants” (although it looks like that’s fallen by the wayside, as far as the top-level signage) isn’t an accident. Sometimes mutants have something good, sometimes bad, but they’re trying something new, consequences be damned.
It fits, and the fact that it’s controversial is probably considered a plus.
It seems to me that the combination of wanting to be “controversial”, not wanting to genuinely weigh or take in feedback from others, and feeling deeply insecure or having low self-esteem, are not going to work well together for anybody.
If you actually do care desperately what other people think about you - which in reality might be a motivator if you’re posting and promoting your opinions all over the web - then repeating to yourself “I don’t care what other people think!” won’t work very well. That applies whether or not you have deeply considered your opinions - but of course if you’re just shooting your mouth from the hip and haven’t really checked or thought about any of the facts related to the issues you’re commenting on, it’s going to make people that much angrier with you.
The bullet points sound good, but in the broader context to me they seem to add up to a recipe for misery, with a light topping of slapstick comedy and “I don’t need anybody!” to cover up how you’re actually feeling.
I didn’t notice anything particularly controversial in this post (unless you count his bold choice to forego copy-editing, but that’s hardly unusual on the internet).
It was just a poorly written mishmash of cliches and mixed metaphors. Although I’ll admit I like to think of myself as someone…
Uh… no, what that says is that I’ve accepted that Happy Mutants, LLC, is a modern for-profit web-content business with all that that entails. Hey, sometimes the “sponsored content” is pretty good.
If you’re saying I should embrace the idea that this is outrage-clickbait, rather than merely an invisible ad for whatever Altucher is selling, well, you’re right, I probably should. Which is… what I said.
I’m wondering why you think you or anyone else in these forums is going to know why this particular piece showed up and insist on guessing from a complete lack of information.
Boing Boing, as I recall, labels sponsored content as such.
Look, if you’re upset that I said what I thought was going on and then immediately said that I didn’t know if for an absolute fact, but simply that it seemed like the likely explanation, then I’m okay with you being upset. I mean, really, scroll up. As disclaimers go, that’s pretty thorough if I do say so. Although we’ll part company on what constitutes a complete lack of information.
As for parsing the relevant fine print, or policing its applications, I’ll just repeat myself: this website you’re reading is not fundamentally different from its peers. They track you, they analyze your use of the site, they know where you’re coming from and what sorts of things people like you are more or less likely to click on, they sell you things, they sell space on the page for other people to sell you things, and ultimately, since the price for reading the page is zero, you are the product.
They’re not bad people for doing this; they’re people whose job it is to run a website. I like it okay, even if I could do without the Altucher content. My own fault for clicking on it–which I do knowing it makes them more, not less, likely to run more of him in the future. If you think the company running the site shares precisely your sense of how and when to apply their own policies, I don’t need to convince you otherwise.
I’m not sure why you think I’m “upset.” I just think it is stupid to bitch and whine (and I see this in a lot of discussions of particular posts recently) that content that you don’t like must be here only because it is sponsored. It’s like “I think this is dumb so everyone must too. That means it is only here because Cory or Xeni are getting paid to place it.” Dumb.
And, yes, I know how the Internet works. I work in security on the Internet. Thanks for the patronizing talk-down.
I spent an hour or so reading various posts at Altucher’s blog, and came away with the impression that he might suffer a bit from a strange form of mildly sociopathic Asperger’s syndrome combined with blase arrogance and a bizarre kind of naivete or willful blindness about himself and how he comes across to others.
Psychologically, this is one oddly narcissistic dude.
He doesn’t seem to understand, or care, why some people really don’t like him, or have cut him off, like some of his close friends and relatives.
Also, serial self help authors are always kind of sketchy in my experience. Sort of a “if you can’t do, teach” kind of situation. I begrudge no one their obligatory “I am successful / famous and here is what I think” book, but if your entire career becomes this kind of stuff… eh.
The whole genre is suspicious. It’s said that the best predictor for buying a self-help book is buying a self-help book in past n (4-6? don’t remember) months.
He thinks it’s everybody else who is the problem, not him. He likes to tell everybody how to live their lives because he thinks his life is superior to everybody else’s. He’s just a jerk.
No, he isn’t. Ads, sponsored content, anything like that, will be marked clearly with “ADVERTISEMENT” or “SPONSORED” at the top. Period. End of da story.
It does seem out-of-character for a lot of the other wonderful things herein. It’s not about what people don’t like; if BB started streaming MCU ,movie, I would be surprised. Not because I don’t like them (and not because I think they are the highpoint of superhero cinema, the late @Donald_Petersen’s beliefs to the contrary), but because such a move would seem out of character.
Which topic? Specifically discussing the content of the post, or discussing why the content of the post is present, or why the author of the content of the posts personality has lead to him to write such content, or what the topic is?
That leap from “I don’t like this” or “The quality of this article is poor”, etc, to “THEY MUST BE BEING PAID” isn’t naivete. Entitlement with its pants down, maybe? Don’t stop, though!
Here’s how it works:
Boing Boing is sent every book ever. They want them reviewed. When one of us enjoys one, however, sometimes we will say to the author, “would you like to post an excerpt or chapter of this to Boing Boing as a post?.” And they say “can I/will you link to my site?” or “will you pay me?”. Then we say “yo dawg of course.” Then they say “you dawg sure”. Then they post it.
