What's your pet peeve in RL?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

Personally I think of advertising as a pollution, and I don't accept it as a necessary evil of doing business in media, so I subvert it everywhere I can, even on sites I otherwise support. If enough people refuse to let the advertising engine work, sites will be incentivised to find other, less odious ways to monetize, like Penny Arcade's Kickstarter project. Yes, I realize that specific model wouldn't work for most businesses, but it's the kind of innovation more people should be doing.

I don't see how throwing out the baby with the bathwater is a solution. If there was a better method for sites making additional revenue and bringing attention to your site or business, it would have likely been found long before the internet and print would be thriving rather than shrinking because of all the migration to the internet.

Push notifications, so far, are about the most effective form of making people aware of sales and things without being so invasive or loud since people elect to have those notifications or not before they get them. I don't see where the money is made on those free apps, though, at least not without ads or charging for it it for a while.

[Armando]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

I don't see how throwing out the baby with the bathwater is a solution.

The problem is you can't trust advertisers to be responsible. When they follow the model of maximum profit, this is what happens. In chronological order:

To be clear, these are real ads that were served on the internet. This is not a parody. Just to prove it, here's a screenshot of the last ad in context at The Elder Scrolls Nexus.



I've talked about advertising responsibly in the past. This is about as far in the opposite direction as I could possibly imagine. It's yet another way, sadly, the brilliant satire Idiocracy turned out to be right on the nose.

Coding Horror: How Not to Advertise on the Internet

How do you get this bullshit to stop? Fuck them. Boycott them. Make it less profitable than being sane and responsible. It's not necessarily that ads are evil, but they sure are being used evilly. I'm sick of that stupid "I used to have belly fat until I learned these 5 weird tips" ad.

[Taskmage]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

I don't accept that all good ways to do things have already been found, and I don't see why I should take this as a special case. People are migrating from print to the internet because in some way it serves their needs better. Well, one way I demand to be served better is by not having obnoxious junk data poured into my information diet. Sites aren't going to improve in this regard as long as I keep letting them get away with the crappy system that print and broadcast media stuck us with, so I don't.

[Taskmage]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

The problem is you can't trust advertisers to be responsible. When they follow the model of maximum profit, this is what happens. In chronological order:
Coding Horror: How Not to Advertise on the Internet

How do you get this bullshit to stop? Fuck them. Boycott them. Make it less profitable than being sane and responsible. It's not necessarily that ads are evil, but they sure are being used evilly. I'm sick of that stupid "I used to have belly fat until I learned these 5 weird tips" ad.

This, too. One of the reasons I find advertising so abhorrent is that I have zero trust whatsoever in ads. Anything being said about a contact or rate plan I'm being sold is almost certainly a lie. Any photo representation of a product is probably grossly inaccurate. Any statistic is likely to be compromised in some way. Why would I reward people for serving me lies? If advertisers found some way to restore that trust capital, maybe started acting more ethically, and I could believe that anything I saw in a spot was relevant to a buying decision I would make, I might have a greater tolerance for their bullshit. Penny Arcade as an example again I believe only advertises products they've personally reviewed and support. As it stands my level of tolerance is zero.

[cidbahamut]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

We're not showing up to any given website looking for advertisements, we're there for the content. I don't see why I should have to have a bunch of obnoxious advertisements shoved in my face getting in the way of digesting actual content. The only times adblock comes down is when I feel like giving some webcomic artists some ad revenue because I enjoy their work, and even that is a rare occurrence.

[Armando]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

I think the fact that web page ads run counter to the way a lot of people want to experience the web these days (e.g. RSS feeds) means there's got to be a better solution. It's just going to take time for a working solution to be available. Youtube has already taken a step in the right direction - when they detect a copyright infringement, the copyright owner actually has the opportunity to monetize the infringing video with an ad instead of taking it down. Some companies are still dicks and take it down anyways, but the smarter ones compromise and let users share content in exchange for ad revenue.

We're not showing up to any given website looking for advertisements, we're there for the content.

To be fair, that content comes at a cost to the creator. They need to get money somehow.

[Taskmage]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

I still have this naive idea that if you offer a quality product that people genuinely appreciate, they will reward and promote you voluntarily. Dresden Codak for example. Aaron Diaz produces quality work with an enthusiastic following and manages to make a living purely on donations and merchandise. I am aware that in many or even most cases this concept fails miserably, but it absolutely can work, I believe that this is the way consumers and honest producers want the system to work, and we should be working on fixing the ways that it doesn't rather than focusing on how to wag our products in as many people's faces as possible.

[Armando]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

I still have this naive idea that if you offer a quality product that people genuinely appreciate, they will reward and promote you voluntarily. Dresden Codak for example.

That's what should happen, but you still need to get that product out into people's hands first. Ads are a pretty good way to do that in webcomics because the ad will look about as good or bad as the comic itself. A namedrop in a high-traffic site will also put you on the map. Without that, though, it doesn't matter how good your product is. It's like painting a masterpiece and keeping it locked away in a box where no one can see it.

[cidbahamut]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

I still have this naive idea that if you offer a quality product that people genuinely appreciate, they will reward and promote you voluntarily. Dresden Codak for example. Aaron Diaz produces quality work with an enthusiastic following and manages to make a living purely on donations and merchandise. I am aware that in many or even most cases this concept fails miserably, but it absolutely can work, I believe that this is the way consumers and honest producers want the system to work, and we should be working on fixing the ways that it doesn't rather than focusing on how to wag our products in as many people's faces as possible.

My sentiments exactly.

When you provide a fantastic product I feel encouraged to throw money at you.

[Taskmage]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

That's what should happen, but you still need to get that product out into people's hands first. Ads are a pretty good way to do that in webcomics because the ad will look about as good or bad as the comic itself. A namedrop in a high-traffic site will also put you on the map. Without that, though, it doesn't matter how good your product is. It's like painting a masterpiece and keeping it locked away in a box where no one can see it.

Sure, and I think the ideal method we should be striving towards is for product recommendations to come from trusted sources on social networks. Social networks in general, not necessarily things like Facebook, Twitter and G+. A good word from one of you guys is worth a thousand times more to me than the biggest campaign of banners and paid endorsements. I think it's possible that Minecraft would not be the cultural phenomena it is, and Notch would not be a guy anyone knew about, if Tycho had not name-dropped it in a news post, because PA has a huge following that trust Gabe and Tycho to shoot straight with them.

Advertisers know this, and what do they do? They try to fake trustable sources by planting sleeper shills onto internet forums, have guerrilla marketers hitting streets and bars undercover, and writing malware that tricks your friends into sending emails and posting to your feed about products just to get you to look at them and run sweepstakes where the entry fee is spamming your friends. They learn trust is essential so they try to subvert it even harder. If they had spent their energy figuring out how to get real, honest endorsements out there rather than innovating in deception and abuse, people might actually listen to their messages and not hate them for it.

[cidbahamut]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

But making quality products is a hell of a lot harder than just lying to people.

[Armando]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

I think it's possible that Minecraft would not be the cultural phenomena it is, and Notch would not be a guy anyone knew about, if Tycho had not name-dropped it in a news post, because PA has a huge following that trust Gabe and Tycho to shoot straight with them.

Tycho must've found out about it somehow though. I guess what I'm trying to say is that you'll always need an initial marketing push. The trusted sources provide the momentum, but the trusted sources still need to find out about you.

Incidentally, I read an article on Kotaku just today arguing that the whole reason retailers and publishers want so desperately to get you to preorder is to get you to commit to buy the game before any trusted source has a chance to dissuade you. Let's Try Something New: Stop Preordering Games

[Taskmage]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

It was already something of a thing before it hit PA. I just wanted to reemphasize the point that the best advertising in the world is based on honesty. The nature of the product strongly incentivises its users to proselytize others into using it, because the value of a multiplayer game goes up with the number of friends also playing. It's possible that Minecraft would have continued to spread based on that mechanism and become a huge phenomenon anyway. That is the kind of angle producers should be thinking about when they're trying to make a product that would sell, not "how can we spin this to make it sound like something people would want to buy."

The pre-order thing wouldn't surprise me in the slightest, but pre-orders are predicated on trust as well: trust in the franchise and/or the content creator. For example, prior to this year I had enough trust in Blizzard's track record of quality to pre-order anything they shipped sight unseen. That is no longer the case.

[Armando]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

The pre-order thing wouldn't surprise me in the slightest, but pre-orders are predicated on trust as well: trust in the franchise and/or the content creator. For example, prior to this year I had enough trust in Blizzard's track record of quality to pre-order anything they shipped sight unseen. That is no longer the case.

While I agree with you, I'm convinced 90% of people are dumb, gullible, or tasteless. I'm not sure enough people even feel they got burnt with Diablo at all, for example.

[Taskmage]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

Well, it's very hard to tell from random samplings of voluntary feedback on the internet, but just to point out the extreme case of consumer karma: Daikatana.