On the contrary, avoiding the appearance of puffery is very important to the native advertising gurus, and they make concerted efforts to emulate the voice of ‘authentic content’.
I didn’t claim this. I just pointed out that this post wasn’t paid for, that marketers posting this sort of content often avoid the “style guides and buzzwords” that you believe are its shibboleths, and that inane cynicism is worse than wrong.
The fact is that it’s not just this review that gets this response. Many of the products we post about–even in the most dismissive and hostile language–immediately earn the response “WHO PAID FOR THIS?” So I think my point stands: it’s a stupid mentality and, in its many variant forms, a stupid comment. Usually we just delete and ban immediately, especially (as in Matthew_Urso’s case) they just can’t let it rest.
Why I left it up this time is left as an exercise for the reader.
To be fair, the article’s headline reads very marketingly, Google Adsense-style Every Word Capitalized And All.
I’m sure it does transform your body if you’re dedicated and starting from a low enough fitness level. To badly paraphrase Starting Strenght’s Mark Rippetoe, true fitness novices are so full of potential that even not-very-good training programs can be surprisingly effective, for a while at least.
“Dedicating Myself to a 4 Day a Week Exercise Regimen for About a Year Transformed My Body. To Decide What Exercises to Do, I Used One of the Many, Many, Many Fitness Trainer Apps Out There. Which One I Used is Nearly Irrelevant.”
Gorilla Workout did not pay me for this piece. Here’s some Twitter proof that I have been obnoxiously excited about the Gorilla Workout for quite some time now: twitter search results for @hellothefuture+gorilla
The excitement is indeed palpable. Always a good feeling to find what works for you. And I must say the ‘results’ picture the header was adapted from is way more fun in context.
In case you are wondering "does the gorilla workout get results," let me try really, really hard to show you results: http://t.co/0zrAd5TUv1
They have a bunch of single workouts priced at $0.89, and $8.99 for all workouts, present and future. So you can view it as a $9.98 workout app, if you’re some sort of “must do all the workouts” completionist.
My issue–after reading it–is that I still had no idea whatsoever how it really works.
Are there games? Music? Timers, stop watches, goals? Social features? A drill sergeant yelling out exercise counts? A cartoony avatar? Does it have any AI features that monitor your progress? Incentives? Graphics? Comparison charts? Diet info? What?
Don’t let the commenters here get to you. BB has one of the most weirdly negative communities I’ve encountered on the internet, for some reason (and this is coming from someone who uses reddit). Virtually every article I’ve looked at the comments on has someone either concern-trolling or generally poo-poo’ing whatever the article is talking about.
And, as you’ve seen, may the gods take pity on you if you have the audacity to enjoy or recommend a product that people have to pay money for. It couldn’t possibly be that you think it’s a cool or useful thing, clearly anyone who recommends goods or services must be a corporate shill trying to trick people into spending money that could otherwise be devoted to artisanal coffee drinks.
It’s just a list of bodyweight workouts of gradually increasing difficulty (e.g. “do 4 sets of 8 squats, 4 lunges, and 10 modified pushups”). It has descriptions of each workout component, including video demonstrations. The app has a timer, but no set completion times. It also has push notifications so you can send yourself a reminder at a set time every day.
They have a bunch of “signature” workouts that are DLC, but none of them look to be particularly necessary. I bought the app based on the article’s recommendation, but I haven’t actually done any of the workouts yet, just poked around in the app. I’m very out of shape and I’m slightly concerned that I’ll be sad for a couple days even with the beginner workouts, but I’m willing to give it a shot and see how I feel after a week or two.
That may be the case based on your deep acquaintance with Boing Boing, acquired in the 50 minutes since you created your account and posted three times in this thread and nowhere else, but my experience has been that as a community, we express enthusiasm frequently about a lot of things.
More than average, I believe, as a community, we’re highly critical of marketing, advertising, propagandistic manipulation, and especially the commodification of the social commons – problems which are rife throughout the Internet and the Web and which are eating away at those things we love about it.
So I, and a few others of us here, were critical of this piece, which by design or intention had the form of an advertisement for a product, and not the form of a review or even of an enthusiastic response to a useful tool. I found this aesthetically displeasing, and somewhat suspect. Of course, that suspicion would only be confirmed in the unlikely event that it was demonstrated that the writer was a professional advertising copywriter or if a blatantly obvious member of the 50 Cent Party showed up out of nowhere and wrote about how this product worked great for him.
If you don’t do the work-out, they loose an 800lb gorilla in your house while you are out as an incentive to exercise.
Coming soon - The Bobcat Workout and The Box Full Of Redbacks Workout. It’s all based on the tried and tested Giant Wasps Nest In Your Bed Workout formula.
Nothing personal, but this piece really does read just like something paid for by a sponsor. Among the reasons is the Q & A that’s often used in paid content placement pieces.
Regardless, good on ya for finding and sticking with something that betters your fitness.
A bit excessive. People who are excited about products are excited to tell people about them.
And a bit much to say that you’ve heard BB say this wasn’t sponsored, but still to insinuate that it was. It’s a step further than those of us who were saying just “this style of writing sounds like copy.”
I have to admit, there are a couple apps I use for which I could probably gush similarly. The only thing that raised my eyebrows was when she claimed one can rock out to Pomplamoose.
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