Cards Against Humanity’s “$5 More” Black Friday Sale(maxistentialist.tumblr.com)
maxistentialist.tumblr.com
Cards Against Humanity’s “$5 More” Black Friday Sale
http://maxistentialist.tumblr.com/post/68844686496/cards-against-humanitys-5-more-black-friday
8 comments
david and goliath by gladwell is indeed a good motivational/justificational book for underdog or lean startup aiming at big corporate.
Why is he being voted down? The book is referenced in the article.
There's been a pretty negative Gladwell vibe on HN lately.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I auto-downvote comments that lack proper punctuation/grammar. It's a fast indicator of quality discourse.
Downvoting for bad grammar? What if this person is a non-native english speaker? I know plenty of smart people who grew up with a different primary language, and can make bad mistakes in english while writing.
Poor grammar and spelling lowers the signal-to-noise ratio. Upvotes and downvotes are quite specifically designed to raise the signal-to-noise ratio on the site. It doesn't have to reflect on the person as an individual.
Having said that, I don't downvote on grammar/spelling alone (as I mentioned elsewhere), and I do cut a little more slack when a person is not a native speaker (but not 100% slack - better grammar and spelling are always preferred, other things being equal).
Having said that, I don't downvote on grammar/spelling alone (as I mentioned elsewhere), and I do cut a little more slack when a person is not a native speaker (but not 100% slack - better grammar and spelling are always preferred, other things being equal).
Then that's just too bad, I guess. HN is an English speaking site. The ability to articulate your thoughts in the medium chosen for the discourse is cost of entry. Poor grammar is a quick indicator of content quality to me. In fact, it's just about the only thing I will downvote. Maybe it's because I was raised by an English professor.
Edited: Typo (of course)
Edited: Typo (of course)
"en English professor"
Sorry buddy, gotta downvote you now. Based on that typo I can tell that this comment lacks quality and doesn't add to the discourse.
Sorry buddy, gotta downvote you now. Based on that typo I can tell that this comment lacks quality and doesn't add to the discourse.
I do not downvote for poor punctuation and grammar, but it does bias me in that direction a bit.
[deleted]
I bought the UK version one day before Black Friday. Well worth the full price as it's kept me amused every day since!
I wonder if the controversy surrounding their dickwolves criticsm and potential hypocrisy has damaged their branding. I doubt it but it would be interesting to see the numbers.
The problem with the dickwolves thing wasn't the dickwolves joke itself, but rather how they responded when people got upset. There is nothing wrong with cards against humanity criticising penny arcade for this while having similar content, as long as they don't respond similarly if people get upset over their content.
And to me it isn't hypocrisy, since the main argument to CAH against Penny Arcade was that they screwed their expo over by drawing that kind of negative attention to it.
That's Penny Arcade you're thinking of.
Im actually referencing this incident I read about on reddit:
http://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qjg3s/we_make_the_game...
http://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qjg3s/we_make_the_game...
Also, you should take in account that when that happened Max also tried use his twitter following to embarrass the people who disagree with. Thats a pretty crappy thing to do in his position.
https://twitter.com/MaxTemkin/status/401226933779701760
I don't care about his politics and opinions, I like the game at how it originally was created: something incredibly horrible and vain.
EDIT: Don't like a card and own the deck? Throw out the offending cards. Don't like the card you hold? Ask the group what you have to do to get rid of a card/don't play it.
https://twitter.com/MaxTemkin/status/401226933779701760
I don't care about his politics and opinions, I like the game at how it originally was created: something incredibly horrible and vain.
EDIT: Don't like a card and own the deck? Throw out the offending cards. Don't like the card you hold? Ask the group what you have to do to get rid of a card/don't play it.
Thanks for the information, I had no idea there was such pointless hypocrisy going on.
The game is still fun, but their response seems nonsensical to me. The distinction is lost on me.
I knew what you were talking about (although, to be fair, the poster you linked is a friend of mine)
Their response: http://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qjg3s/we_make_the_game...
Their response: http://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qjg3s/we_make_the_game...
It strikes me as a bit sensationalist to call that an "incident". Someone asked a question, they responded civilly. The discussion turned slightly inflammatory amongst other Redditors (i.e. not the actual CAH guys), as isn't completely unexpected on Reddit when you're discussing an even vaguely touchy subject.
[deleted]
I ran a similar experiment with Rejection Therapy a year or so ago. I used big red "DON'T BUY" purchase buttons and sales went up slightly.
Long story as to why I took them down, and I'm not even sure if I should discuss it so I won't.
Long story as to why I took them down, and I'm not even sure if I should discuss it so I won't.
Why did you take them down? :)
It's a bizarre and complicated story I hope to one day tell, but not today.
Curses to you. I want to know, today. You think the internet has conditioned me to be patient? No! I want it now.
You're good.
I think this is an important lesson in marketing and getting press attention that other start ups or entrepreneurs should take note of.
The key to getting press / marketing attention / viral affect is to do something different that gets people talking.
On black Friday everyone is cutting their prices. If you put out a press release saying you were cutting your prices too it is unlikely to even register on the press' radar. However, do something so different and disruptive that it becomes a unique and funny story and it warrants press attention and share-ability.
Quite often I notice people on HN reading every post about 'Simple guide to marketing your app' or other people's success stories, thinking 'If I follow these steps they used to promote their app, I'll have the same success' - however the opposite is true, if you do what they did you're less likely to have the same impact they originally had.
This applies to anything from the original idea of sending personalised emails to the blogosphere regarding your new app, to the original milliondollarhomepage.com.
TL;DR; - Be different, disrupt the expected and gain press by not following the crowd.
The key to getting press / marketing attention / viral affect is to do something different that gets people talking.
On black Friday everyone is cutting their prices. If you put out a press release saying you were cutting your prices too it is unlikely to even register on the press' radar. However, do something so different and disruptive that it becomes a unique and funny story and it warrants press attention and share-ability.
Quite often I notice people on HN reading every post about 'Simple guide to marketing your app' or other people's success stories, thinking 'If I follow these steps they used to promote their app, I'll have the same success' - however the opposite is true, if you do what they did you're less likely to have the same impact they originally had.
This applies to anything from the original idea of sending personalised emails to the blogosphere regarding your new app, to the original milliondollarhomepage.com.
TL;DR; - Be different, disrupt the expected and gain press by not following the crowd.
This is basically useless advice. If you're too different people will think it's weird, or just being different for different's sake, and they'll still pass you up.
The real key is to be original. Except that's also useless advice, because it's only ever obvious in hindsight.
The real key is to be original. Except that's also useless advice, because it's only ever obvious in hindsight.
>because it's only ever obvious in hindsight.
Seriously. We can do case studies until the cows come home and attempt to market products in ingenious ways and still never get noticed. While a different company that does something as a mere joke will get heaps more exposure without even trying. I don't work in marketing, but this must be frustrating.
Seriously. We can do case studies until the cows come home and attempt to market products in ingenious ways and still never get noticed. While a different company that does something as a mere joke will get heaps more exposure without even trying. I don't work in marketing, but this must be frustrating.
I think the real key here is have a product people want. After that you have a lot more room to take chances in marketing without it blowing up. They even conclude that they don't believe people even cared when purchasing from amazon that day.
The CAH crew has a history of running cute little business experiments like this. One I remember from earlier this year:
https://twitter.com/wesleyverhoeve/status/381151177494130689...
https://twitter.com/wesleyverhoeve/status/381151177494130689...
Just as a historical note: Max also complained that they didn't get much money out of PAX (where they did this) compared to the amount of money they spent. [They made their booth VERY elaborate]
I think CAH understands their customer quite well. Others applying this direct approach could be perceived as dicks.
dickwolves.
http://cfh.io