The Despair Inc. Blog

The Social Media Tee

A gorgeous, 8-color masterpiece which captures ever so brilliantly the three behavioral disorders propelling the continued phenomenal growth of today’s most widely-trafficked social media sites. And at the intersection of the dysfunctional forces of Narcissism, ADHD, and Stalking resides today’s fastest growing social media experiment of all- Twitter.

And speaking of Twitter, in an effort to spread the word to that audience which needs this t-shirt more than all others, Despair is once again having a Retweeting contest. We’ll be giving away Ten free Social Media tees to a random set of ten Twitterers who Retweet the following entry:

DESPAIR.COM unveils Social Media Tee for Narcissists,Stalkers & ADHD set http://cli.gs/WMPPTD (RT for chance to win 1 of 10)

The 10 winners will be announced via my Twitter on Thursday afternoon.

But hold on- as timely as that t-shirt is, Despair’s unveiling yet another new DespairWear masterpiece- our Government Motors Tee!

Yesterday marked the end of one era, and the dawning of a new. An American Giant- General Motors- finally collapsed under the weight of decades of poor management decisions, unsustainable labor agreements, and other unfortunate missteps. And now- thanks to the unvolunteered-but-nevertheless-mandatory financial contributions of a third-of-a-billion tiny little people like you and me- that colossus of heavy industry is now majority owned by the US Government.

That’s right. The entire fate of one of the largest corporations in the history of Capitalism now rests in the hands of the one group potentially even less qualified and capable of leading it a more efficient, more consumer-oriented, more quality-focused future- The United States Government. (Um, this wasn’t exactly the revolution we had in mind…)

Our new Government Motors tee sums it all up perfectly. Oh, it’s the same old GM logo you know and love to be ambivalent to- but we’ve made a few upgrades. Given where we are, is there any reason at all NOT to incorporate the Hammer & Sickle into it?

And yes, we’re having a Retweet contest here, too- just because if we didn’t, I know I’d get complaints from those of you who prefer this tee to the former. Yet again, we’ll be giving away Ten free Government Motors tees to a random set of ten Twitterers who Retweet the following entry:

DESPAIR.COM intros #GMtee. In Soviet Amerika, Car Drives YOU. Bankrupt! http://cli.gs/UMHLJv (RT for chance to win 1 of 10)

And yes, we’ll announce the winners at the same time on Thursday as we announce the other contest winners.

That’s it for this week! Hope you liked these. I designed the first one myself- so by buying it, you’ll be helping to contribute to my Single Malt Scotch kitty fund because I get a little royalty off of the sale of each of Tee. As impressive as that cabinet may appear for a college-dropout who handles lower-level online marketing responsibilities for Despair, it’s actually quite barren. Only 5 of the bottles in there even have anything in them- and one of them is American Honey - Wild Turkey Whisky Liqueur, which is 65% full and will remain that way- because my ex-girlfriend used to enjoy an occasional wee glass… Way back when… And she doesn’t want it back and I wouldn’t send it to her anyway, because she still has a crapload of my books- including, ironically, “What Narcissism Means to Me”- a pretty decent book of poetry by Tony Hoagland, author of “Donkey Gospel”, which includes this little gem and this one and WHY am I telling you this? I have no idea. I start talking about whisky and slowly I descend into tangents upon tangents, which is why you could really help me out by validating my insights into ADHD, rendered brilliantly in the t-shirt I previously flacked but will plug here in case you are too lazy to, you know, scroll your mouse up half-a-page…

All that to say… I’ve been dying to invite my whisky-loving friends over to dazzle them with a bottle of the legendary Yoichi 20 Year Cask Strength (Winner of Whisky Magazine’s “World’s Best Whisky of 2008” Award…). But at $315 a bottle, I’m sure not going to be buying that myself… Unless I came into some money suddenly, due to an unexpected outpouring of love for either my new t-shirt, or for me.

I could go on- since the subject was the Love of ME, and Narcissism, along with ADHD, is something I know more than a little bit about. But I have to go. No, I’m not planning to go stalk somebody so I can hit the Social Media trifecta. Those days are over. But thanks for asking.

I DIDN’T EVEN WANT TO KNOW 1 RANDOM THING ABOUT YOU.

It’s become one of the fastest moving fads in the history of social networking. In one week’s time, over 5 million narcissists, braggarts, exhibitionists, and serial jabbermouths have posted notes to Facebook, disclosing “25 random things” about themselves to their online network of family, friends, friends-of-friends, and of course more than a few pseudo-friends who are just keeping up appearances because they lacked the guts to decline a “friend invite”. All the while, these very same people are exposing their dirty laundry, trivial observations, unsolicited fantasies, yawn-inducing confessions, white-washed biographical highlight reels and probably a hefty share of outright lies to an armada of sexual deviants, unstable stalkers, future blackmailers, potentially nefarious foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, and a legion of marketing bots- all of which are probably paying closer attention than those the list was intended for (for reasons best left unmentioned).

Just what kind of “random things” have been revealed via this mass act of egotistical disgorgement? Why, a friend of journalist Dan Zak of the Washington Post confessed, “I have pooped my pants more than three times as an adult.” Dallasite Mandy Aguilar reveals, “…my dog kisses me on the mouth. It’s cool.” An associate of Time magazine reporter Claire Suddath inexplicably revealed, “I like to tape my thumbs to my hands to see what it would be like to be a dinosaur.”

Multiple the pointlessness and puerility of those three disclosures times 41.6 million- and you’ll begin to get a sense of the sheer enormity of this catastrophe. Has there ever been a greater amount of trivial idiocy manufactured in a smaller amount of time and then forced upon a greater number of victims in the history of human civilization? Okay, besides the blogosophere then?

Unlikely.

And- as is so often the case- whenever massive numbers of fad-loving people publicly engage in annoying acts of self-celebration, an even greater number of people sit, quietly grinding their teeth, annoyed beyond imagining. It is for those people that Despair has created the 1 Random Thing t-shirt (in Men’s & Women’s cuts!). And- for those who order within the next 72 hours- Despair is also offering a chance to save 20% on the shirt itself! Simply use the coupon code “random” (no quotes) and automatically save 20%! That’s almost $4 off! (Offer expires 2/14/09.)

As with last week’s shirt, if you’re wanting to Tweet about it, just copy this url here: http://cli.gs/STdS26 and paste it into your twitter post. (And forgive me for repeating myself, but if you were following my Twitter feed you would’ve learned all this 3 hours ago. Membership has its privileges- and for the moment, I’m not charging anything to be a part of my exclusive social network! Do you really want to risk the chance of one day attempting to join my Twitter feed and learning too late that it requires an annual subscription fee of $20? $50? $100? For a chance to receive far more than just 25 random things about me per week! (Did I really just go there? I think I did.)

And hey there- before I end this- did you know we introduced yet another t-shirt for Facebook users? If you’ve found yourself- after joining Facebook- constantly besieged with friend requests, mob wars invitations, battle-of-the-band invites, “make me a celebrity” inquiries, endless new friend suggestions, and even more invasive requests from people you barely know then the Ignore Tee is for you! (There’s more marketing copy below this pic, if you care…)

Hey ladies, this one comes in a babydoll tee, too- because we KNOW you probably need it even more than the Men on this list do… (Not that we’re stalking your Facebook page or anything. I mean, that would be a violation of the sacred compact between a business and a customer. And the last thing we would ever do would be to use our access to your privileged information- like names and addresses- to research our customers online profiles, searching for that… Special lady who might… Complete us… Even though she just thinks of us at the moment as a friend… Or, at least, a friendly voice on the other end of this email… Even if she doesn’t yet know that we know her so very, very well. And her friends, her family, even 25 Random Things about her…)

Are you creeped out enough yet, girls? You should be- there are people out there who actually think this way! And that’s why you probably need BOTH of these tees! (BTW- the coupon code “random”(no quotes) will give you 20% for this tee as well as the “1 Random Thing” tee. Or on both if you so choose…)

(Oh boy. The lengths I go to amuse myself… Even I can’t believe them sometimes.)

UPDATE: Last Chance on Christmas Tees

LESS THAN 48 HOURS AFTER LAUNCH, THE DESPAIRWEAR LIMITED-EDITION CHRISTMAS TEES ARE ALMOST GONE

NOTE: You really may want to read this email all the way through.

If you’ve toyed with the idea of buying one of our Limited-edition “Nice Shot” Christmas Tees but haven’t yet acted, you’re running out of time! Less than 2 days into the launch, the majority of our tees, illustrated by the world’s greatest T-shirt designer Glenn Jones- has already been sold. At these rates, we fully expect to be pulling them from the website permanently within less than 48 hours!

Remember- there are TWO variations available of our “Nice Shot” Christmas Tee. The Official Limited-Edition Version (depicted above)- and the Unofficial “Employee-Edition” version of the shirt (depicted under the links below).

LINKS:

“Nice Shot” - Limited-Edition Christmas Tee (1,000 only, includes certificate of authenticity.)
“Nice Shot” - Employee-Edition Christmas Tee (Smaller run only for Despair Employees and Wailing List / Twitter / Blog Subscribers).

PLEASE NOTE: Orders including either (or both) tees should start shipping by December 11th. All will be shipped by the 15th. So get them NOW if you are going to get them!  Supplies are almost out!

On a totally unrelated note- 20,000 denizens of Central Texas swarmed upon the Austin Convention Center yesterday to attend the “Get Motivated” Super Seminar. As economic conditions worsen dramatically with each passing week, and more and more Americans face fears of job or financial losses, the worried masses came to hoping to pick up some words of encouragement from multi-millionaire political figures, real estate flippers, and motivational gurus- none of whom will ever have to worry about money again.

But hidden among the chanting, singing, dancing (yet quietly terrified) masses was a small band of heretics- a group who held beliefs tantamount to blasphemy to every soul in the room. They were employees of Despair, Inc. - The World’s Leading Purveyor of Demotivational™ products. And they had cameras.

If you want to see some of what we captured- follow my twitter feed. (I’ll be uploading pics and videos in the days ahead- and followers of my feed will be the first to see them.)

See- aren’t you glad you read this all the way to the end?

LOOKING FOR A BAILOUT?

(offer ends midnight, November 25, 2008)

HOW DOES 15% OFF YOUR NEXT PURCHASE SOUND?

This week, I’m keeping it really simple. I’ve got a coupon code for 15% off your next purchase from Despair.com- and I’m going to share it with you. Right after this brief commercial interruption.

See, I’m still trying to build up the followership for my Twitter feed. One-thousand, one-hundred and fifty of you have already been kind enough to sign up- and I appreciate it very much. But that’s only 1% of the people on The Wailing List. One Percent!

I’m already humiliated enough that I’m a 30-something college dropout who slouched his way into the sordid marketing profession (and at Despair, Inc. no less!), despite having authored a great many unpublished screenplays, novels and speeches*. (I mean, how ashamed of your career do you have to be to tell your friends and family that you’re ‘an unpublished screenwriter’ rather than admit that, actually, you’re in the Response Generation business.)

Yet- (and you have no idea how greatly it pains me to type these next words)- I ultimately have to define myself as a Marketing Person. Yes, I’m deeply in the closet about it. If the closet were a wardrobe, I’d be so deep in it I’d be on the shores of Cair Paravel by now, trying to charter the Dawn Treader for a one-way trip to The Lone islands.

And since I am (ashamedly) a Marketing Person, I can not help but look at a 1% response rate and think, “Wow- I’m faring miserably at the very thing I am deeply ashamed to admit that I do for a living!” And then I feel new screenplays and speeches welling up from inside me and the vicious, pathetic cycle that is my life threatens to repeat itself anew.

One percent?! One percent of you have signed up for my Twitter feed! You guys/gals always give me much better than that in response to coupon codes and freebie promotions! In fact, it’s your reliable responsiveness to my product promotions that keeps me employed in a department that would prefer to see my job go to a certain scrappy, vivacious 20-something college graduate intern with a Marketing Degree from the SMU’s Cox School of Business.

I mean- I could drive up to Dallas right now- the city of my birth- a city constantly vying with Houston for the title of Shallowest City in the Central United States. And I could sneak right into the impossibly trendy Candleroom Bar (or UltraLounge, as they call it), a place where the wealthiest, most beautiful and vapid 20-somethings in that Mecca of Narcissists- many of them SMU students or graduates- go to “see and be seen“, and I could ask 100 girls there the shallowest line ever muttered in a bar, “If I told you you had a beautiful body, would it hold it against me?” and I would do better than one percent! Even if I do look like, in the words of the aforementioned SMU graduate coworker/competitor (and former Member of Candleroom- because yes, they require a Membership), “I cut my own hair”… (I am a Marketing Specialist and Unpublished Screenwriter, after all. At least a couple of girls there might be both inebriated and superficial enough to find that I which I despise most about myself to be worth taking a chance on… At least until they sobered up and got a good look at my haircut.)

So- needless to say- I’m upset.

And so- having subjected you to this lengthy series of postulations, admissions, digressions and confessions- I return your annoyed attentions back to my original promotional hook- my offer to provide you with a 15% discount on your next Despair purchase.

If you want to save 15% on your next purchase, all you need to do is… Subscribe to my Twitter Feed! Because I’m going to send out a coupon code via my Twitter account at 8PM Central Tonight! And- in the next day or so- I will be Twittering a sneak-preview of a new, limited-edition DespairWear Christmas tee! Remember how fast they sold out last year? Yes- in only a few days- they were all gone. Those following my Twitter feed will be the first to see this year’s edition- and will have a leg up on placing pre-orders for Christmas gifts!

Yes, I know many of you will just visit my Twitter page to try to find the coupon without bothering to sign up and actually FOLLOW me. I’m hoping some of you will make the tiny effort to create a Twitter account so I can actually consider it a successful conversion and bump my sad 1% response rate up. If I’m not interesting enough to convince you to get an account, there are other fascinating feeds out there you could also be following. The Onion. The Hammer. The Python. The Vader. The Shaq. Even The Intern (who I am plugging only because she was the one who inspired me to write this promotion, thanks to her endless complaints about the nightlife in Austin not being able to, er, hold a candle to Candleroom.) And even if none of the above suits you, there are 100 other wildly popular feeds on this page alone. Tragically, I’m not one of them! (Though I have at least managed to crack one site’s list of Top Twitterers in Austin. So I got that going for me… )

For those of you still uncertain what Twitter even is- check out this helpful online guide: A Newbie’s Guide to Twitter.

To those of you who are already following me- and/or are sick to death of hearing me flack my Twitter feed via The Wailing List- I promise this will be the last time this year that I make a hardcore pitch. From now on through year-end, other than a simple hyperlink, I’ll flack it no more.

Thanks for enduring my final lengthy Twitter pitch. And for putting up with my classic Bait-And-Switch with that Bailout setup. I really did plan to have a whole Bailout theme for this week’s promotion. And then a certain someone started talking about a certain club- in terms that were utterly exultant instead of appropriately ashamed- and I wound up here- having annoyed a lot of you. Particularly the good-looking Dallasites and Houstonians on my list. If there are any.

I’ll shut up now.

* Actually, I’ve only written a couple of speeches. And they’re mostly long-form rebukes of ex-girlfriends, intended to be delivered in the context of an Oscar acceptance speech for Best Original Screenplay Adapted From a Novel (that, incidentally, I also had authored)… It’s complicated.

This week, I have no special product promotions or coupon codes to push (though I just tested the coupon codes from last week’s promotion and they apparently are still active if you missed out on the discounted calendars).

Instead, I’m going to simply flog my new personal Twitter feed. Want to follow it? Click here: http://twitter.com/wailinglist.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. So I’ll back up a bit.

I received an email last week from my boss, the VP of Online Marketing. Remember her?  It was entitled simply, “You’re promoted! Let’s discuss at Happy Hour at 5!”  The body of the mail said only, “Yes, I’m serious! Congratulations! You’re going to help the Marketing Department unleash the forces of Web 2.0 for Despair!!!” And it closed, as always, with the sign-off, “your boss, j.”

I kid you not. Whatever delusions I harbored about being promoted to the Writing Staff at Despair after authoring a new product were naive. One original, quotable aphorism apparently does not a true writer make…

Longtime readers of the Wailing List may not be surprised to learn that I immediately dove into my most trafficked of Bookmark Directories (”Escapes”) and started looking (again) at job postings on Monster.com. The pickings were unfortunately slim as is perhaps not surprising in this economic climate, and given the fact that every job interview I’ve had during my many years at Despair seems to go poorly (particularly when they learn who my current employer is), I steeled up the courage to meet Jennifer at her preferred east-side inebriation station, Nuevo Leon.

I arrived 20 minutes early, hoping to preempt her arrival and thus have at least few lucid exchanges before her descent into an oceans of triple sec, lime juice and Pretzel-salted drool. Unfortunately, there was some confusion about the time zone. (I assumed she meant Central Standard, as opposed to Newfoundland Time.) But, as Jennifer often says, and one can occasionally discern, “Anytime is the right time for a glass of tequila with a shot of lime.”

(Incidentally, will some subscriber to the Wailing List with far worse taste in music than I have tell me if this is a Jimmy Buffett lyric or an excerpt from some old Joe Walsh concept album I’ve never heard of- or something? As she stumbled her way through the line, she kept looking at me as if expecting I would help her complete the couplet and I unfortunately had to leave her hanging…)

The details of our conversation are better left to your imagination.  The sum of it is this. My new “promotion” apparently isn’t the sort that includes an advancement in rank or position or salary. Instead it seems to entail simply an increase in my responsibilities, a tiny budget, and a new mandate to “Launch the company into Web 2.0 overdrive.”  Like, now.

Yes- I can hear thousands of you groaning already. Web 2.0 is so 2004 and was ill-defined gobbledegook to begin with. According to Wikipedia, Web 2.0 was defined in 2006 as, “…the philosophy of mutually maximizing collective intelligence and added value for each participant by formalized and dynamic information sharing and creation.”

If the Internet has proven anything, it is that the fanciful, cyber-libertarian notions of “collective intelligence” that can be “maximized” by “dynamic information sharing” were just pure rot to begin with. If anything, the Internet has unleashed collective stupidity on a scale never before imagined… (Leeroy Jenkins, anyone?)

But remember, Despair didn’t even have a blog until August of 2007. So it seems entirely fitting that we are only just now aiming to catch up with that which was rendered passé several years prior.

Given the futility of my mandate, the paucity of my new budget ($500/mo), and the complete lack of guidance or direction I’ve received, I have decidedly modest goals. I was unironically encouraged to “do something historic”- and so that is my intent.

It starts withmy Twitter feed. (Those of you unfamiliar with Twitter can learn more about it here- but a simple explanation of it is that it is instant-messaging meets a blog- whereby subscribers can follow me on my daily journey through various mundane duties, irritating conversations, pointless revelations, whatever I choose to write about. The catch- no message can be longer than 140 characters. Think of it as blogging live in haiku.)  I don’t expect most of you to subscribe- this being an admittedly throwaway outlet.  But I’ll have a hard time convincing my boss this was a success if I end up with only a couple of dozen subscribers. So please, some of you, help!

I take as a given that Twittering is a largely pointless exercise that seems best suited as an outlet for narcissists and input for stalkers. Having been both in my lifetime, I can admit that earlier versions of myself might have rapturously embraced it as liberating. I harbor no such illusions now.

Admitting to its insufficiencies, Twitter nevertheless gives me exactly what I need to usher in ‘the Web 2.0 era at Despair‘. Namely, it gives me cover to do other things.  Things otherwise impossible.

My inaugural Twittering event- inarguably historic by my definition- will be to host the World’s First Whisky Tasting Via Twitter. Starring myself and a couple of Despair friends, sponsored entirely by Despair.  When life gives you lemons…

Those subscribing to my Twitter feed will get to join us on a historic voyage- as we imbibe and describe up to $500 worth of Single Malt Scotch Whiskies at a well-stocked bar in Austin. The Nose. The Palette. The Finish. Each will be described in 140 characters or less by Despair’s finest occupants of the lowest blocks on the Org Chart, until we run out of money.

In order to make this a ‘multi-camera’ experience, I will be setting up Twitter feeds for two-other Despair employees*. In this way, subscribers will be able to follow each feed in relative real-time. You’ll get three different perspectives on several of Scotland most-acclaimed whiskies (and occasional product placement for Despair.com, so as to keep this, er, legitimately promotional…). I’ll post those other Twitter feeds at my own Twitter site before the event. So follow me if you dare as I use the mandate of “unleash the forces of Web 2.0″ as political cover for turning my marketing micro-budget into a Entertainment Allowance for the Unsung Heroes of Despair.  Namely, ME.

Oh, and please buy Despair products so I can keep my cruddy job!