March 28, 2005
beyond “beyond lame”.
As if fake blogs weren’t “beyond lame” enough.
Now I think we’ve got… wait for it… fake comments.
You can think they’re real if you want. Something tells me they’re not. I dunno, they’re all too “on message” or something.
Also, their huge quantities seems rather unlikely.
What a great scenario: Some twentysomething PR intern being told to write that crap hour after hour, from some gasket-popping “Creative” Director about to lose his job. Hysterical.
Reasons they are fake:
1. No spelling errors.
2. 95% of the comments use proper punctuation, and on the Internet, we know that’s simply impossible. The Internet is like a black hole of stupidity, sucking in everything around it till it coalesces in a great big ball of dumb.
3. No profanity or slang. Not enough AOL speak. e.g. — lol, rofl
4. They *are* way too focused. It’s practically a rule of messageboard discussion that every third post must be non-sequitur or irrelevant in some way.
5. Comments don’t show up right away. They screen people from posting things like “This blog is fake and your comments are all posted by the same intern.” Such as I just did.
Fake Blogs? with FAKE comments? Shocking, just shocking. Next thing you’ll see is like the blog offering T-Shirts or something…
Speaking of which, how we doing, summer is around the corner…
ROLF! LOL!
You mean this crap won’t make me fifteen again? (Not that I’d ever want to be …)
1) Brendan, your comment IS posted and has been responded to. Which brings me to…
2) Doesn’t making fun of these assholes just create the kind of (fake?) buzz they’re looking for for their bull-log? Should we not just ignore them?
It hurts just to read them. It was the same pain I get when I hear ads on commercial radio, kind of a toothache behind my eyes. I think it’s an allergy to boredom…
yeah, they must be fake. I don’t think it’s all the work of one intern though. It reads more like an inbred focus group or brainstorm session. Lot’s of short sentences that kind of bounce off one another.
Hugh,
Actually, they are real. You have to register to be able to comment on the Captain Morgan blog, but they’re real. Stupid, mostly, but real. Mine showed up in pretty short order after I posted.
Geico has a fake blog, written by the Gecko: http://www.geico.com/blog/
More commentary here: http://www.mostlymuppet.com/archives/2005/03/29/geico-blogging/
folks, stop fretting over fake blogs and comments. here’s an analogy to help you.
like any great art style/philosophy, there will be “knock offs”…similar looking/feeling work that fools some of the people, some of the time. however, great art is great because it possesses a quality that captures a person’s attention and invokes a feeling that did not exist before.
to me, it’s not a stretch to see blogs in the same light. great blogs are like great art — they possess character and feeling that can’t be found elsewhere. a great blog, like great art will attract people again and again. that’s why we have museums — people are attracted to items that inspire and challenge us. a great blog does the same thing — not to kiss Hugh’s ass, but we come back here to get something that no one else can give.
so, yea, there will be fake blogs and fake comments. and, like fake art, it will be looked at once, then forgotten. let the ad folks have their fun and just ignore them for what they are — people with weak imaginations that have to latch onto other ideas to extract money from weak minded customers.…
damn, what insight! should have put it on my own blog.…cheers!
Just because they responded to me doesn’t mean they’re real. I still can’t fathom what kind of people actually read that blog thinking it’s clever or funny.
Dumber than a FOX sitcom.
At Least Fake Orgasms Can Be Convincing
Hugh has been hammering the emerging trend where marketers jump on the blog bandwagon without first buying a ticket to the Cluetrain. Here’s some of what he has had to say: As if fake blogs weren’t “beyond lame” enough. Now…