The Despair Inc. Blog

Are you ready for a SoftWear Upgrade?

Well, ready or not, here they come! And first in the lineup is a revolutionary leap in personalized ironic wear- our Personalized Mugshot Tees.

For the first time ever, we’re able to produce fully customizable t-shirts ON DEMAND- granting you, the discerning cynic, even greater firepower in your war against mundane clothing!

Our Personalized Mugshot Tee allow you to choose the name printed on the Police placard, as well as the ability to select the specific crime that individual has been arrested for. IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES!

What about a personalized “PUBLIC INTOXICATION” tee for that coworker who got just a weeeeeeeee bit drunk at the last company outing? Or how about a t-shirt identifying that overbearing alpha-male lunkhead in your life as being guilty of “IMPERSONATING A MAN”? Or what about buying an “INDECENT EXPOSURE” tee for that woefully immodest lady-of-ill-repute who you unfortunately have to call “Sis”. The possibilities are as limitless as your liability!

Yes, this level of fully customizable awesomeness doesn’t come cheap- in fact, it’s costing us a fortune to print these babies! And- to the rest of the profane riffraff out there in the world, this level of badassicality is retailing for a respectable $29.95.

But for you, Wailing List subscriber, we introducing them at “a very special price”.

If you want to pick up YOUR fully Personalized Mugshot Tee for $6 less than retail, all you need to do is use the coupon code shoplifting when placing your order. It’s good for 20% off any and all Personalized Mugshot Tee that you purchase by Sunday!

And hey, that’s not all! Speaking of Soft Wear Upgrades, we’ve also just updated our Social Media Venn Diagram Tee to Version 2.0.1. Now with foursquare compatibility!

If you’re not exactly sure WHY we decided to give Foursquare that particular honor in our upgraded design, here’s a helpful hint.

And hey- if you’re looking to upgrade your Social Media Tee, you can get in on the same Soft Wear Upgrade discount program we’re offering for the Mugshot Tees. Just use the coupon code shoplifting and you’ll pick up that t-shirt for 20% off! That’s only $12.76 a tee! And it still includes all those shiny colors- at no extra charge!

Remember, this coupon code expires on Sunday. So if you want to get in on these sweet deals, you gotta move!

Our latest Caption Contest voting is complete- and the winners are decided! Introducing LEGACY and ACQUISITION. Our two first prize winners are Mike Plantan (for “Legacy”) and Ms. Deborah Knight (for “Acquisition”). They’re both soon to receive checks for $750, along with some other goodies. Also in line for a $250 cash prize for Retweeting our Contest Announcement is one Haley Vilhaurer (@haleybobl). Congrats to you all!

And, yet again, LEGACY and ACQUISITION aren’t the only new Demotivators we’re adding this week. Despair’s proud to unveil our latest entry into the canon, WEALTH! Didn’t see THAT coming, huh? And still- the WINS continue. Because starting now, Despair is going to give each and every one of you a chance to pick a free Desktopper or Lithograph with your next order! But details matter, SO PAY ATTENTION!

We’ve unveiled Desktoppers of all three new designs (“Acquisition“, “Legacy” and “Wealth“) and Lithographs of “Wealth” and “Legacy”. And from now through the weekend, we’re giving YOU folks a chance to choose which of the new items you’d like to pick up for FREE! All you have to do is decide which item you’d like for free- then use the appropriate coupon code (listed below) when placing your order. We’ll handle the rest! (note:You must have $19.95 of merchandise in your cart before you can apply your free product coupon.)

Free Acquisition Desktopper, use the coupon code: freeacquisitiondesktopper
Free Legacy Desktopper, use the coupon code: freelegacydesktopper
Free Legacy Lithograph, use the coupon code: freelegacylitho
Free Wealth Desktopper, use the coupon code: freewealthdesktopper
Free Wealth Lithograph, use the coupon code: freewealthlitho

But if you’re interested in taking advantage of one of these freebies, you’ll have to act fast. The coupon codes expire this Monday!

Thanks again to all of you who participating in our latest contest. Whether you submitted a caption, or you judged raw entries, or you retweeted the contest tweet, or you just voted on Semi-Finalists- you helped bring about two funny new entries to the Demotivator® canon.

See y’all soon!

Here we go again! It’s our second Caption Contest of 2010- and once again, we’re bringing the big bucks for the smartest caption! The winner of this contest gets $750- not a bad payoff (plus whatever money your employer pays you while you waste time at your workplace trying to come up with a funny caption!) So- my fellow disgruntled masses- LET’S GET READY TO GRUUUUUUUUMMMMMMBBBLLLLLLLE!!

So- for those of you NEW to Despair’s Wailing List newsletter, lemme explain how this works…

Despair has gone to great pains to procure a wonderfully perfectly caption-worthy image- the beaut above. Now we’re calling on YOU to author the perfect title & caption for it!

From now until noon CST on Tuesday, we’re accepting your caption and title submissions. And by “title”, we mean “title for the poster”- NOT your job title. You could have the wittiest caption in the world- but if you title your poster “CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SPECIALIST“, you are probably not going to win the contest.

After the Submission window closes, then the Peer-review window opens! From Tuesday at 12:01pm CDT through Wednesday at midnight CST- YOU are all invited to vote on randomized, unedited submissions from other participants- should you want to do so. (You will receive an e-mail invitation to judge captions Tuesday morning…)

A WORD OF WARNING: I know you longtimers are tired of hearing this, but I get complaints every time- so I’m repeating it. If you CHOOSE to join the Peer-Review stage, you’re inevitably going to be grinding your way through a seemingly barrage of frequently annoying or tiresome material. Yes, you’ll find some gems along with way, but you’ll endure more than your share of groaners in the process. It’s the price you pay for joining the loser-generated content revolution! But the reward is worth it- because once the contest is complete- Despair will offer, for a very brief time- a chance for you to get a framed 5×7 of the winning design for FREE.

On Thursday, we will announce the semi-finalists from amongst the top contest vote-getters. If you don’t want to participate in the caption-judging but you do want to vote on semi-finalists, you’re more than welcome to do so. (It’s a lot more fun, frankly…) A final vote will be held starting Thursday afternoon to determine the final contest winner!

All you need to do in order to submit your entry (or entries) is visit this link. Remember, you have until Monday at midnight to submit your suggested caption(s)!

And- once again I’m inviting my Twitter followers- should they want to- to you Retweet the CONTEST invitation below. By doing so, you’ll automatically be registered for a chance to win $250. Simply cut and paste the blue text below into your Twitter update window and tweet it to the world!

DESPAIR.COM CONTEST: Write the best caption for this pic to win $750! http://bit.ly/1hk74 (Retweet 4 chance 2 win $200)

(Yet again, let me remind you: In order to qualify for the Twitter drawing, you need have at least 5 followers. And if it looks like all 5 of your followers were generated by YOU hastily so they can have fake conversations with you, you’ll be disqualified. We’re not trying to encourage multiple-personality disorders, here- you’ll have enough personality problems already!)

Let your brilliant caption submissions begin!

And hey- a quick-reminder for you DespairWear t-shirt fans out there… If you want to save 20% on one of our recent tees, such as The Flash Tee, The Help Tee, The Toyota Tee, My Opinion Tee or the Vote Whig Tee- just use the coupon code iwanttosave20percentononeofyourrecenttees (this coupon expires at end of day tomorrow, or Friday the 26th).

Oh yes! It’s back- and it’s bigger than ever! Despair is starting off 2010 with another of our beloved Caption Contests- and this time, we’re giving the winner $750! Wow! How’s THAT for inflation! So- prepare yourselves- one and all- for the battle of wits that pits you again thousands of your fellow demoralized, disgruntled, or disaffected Despair, Inc. fans!

I know most of you have figured out how this works by now- but for the new subscribers and/or the particularly slow long-time followers, here’s the rundown on the rules.

We’ve prepared a perfectly caption-worthy image. Now we’re calling on YOU to with with the perfect title & caption for it!

If your submitted caption is chosen to be the best- you’ll receive a check for $500- along with some other goodies (that may or may not be grabbed hastily from our “RETURNS” bin in the warehouse…)

Here’s how this all works…

From now until noon CDT on Tuesday, we are accepting your caption and title submissions. (Incidentally, the “TITLE” field is NOT asking for your job title… I can’t tell you how many captions I’ve seen that had titles like “INSURANCE ADJUSTER” or “EXECUTIVE CUSTOMER ASSISTANT IN TRAINING” or whatnot. We’re asking you to submit a title for your parody poster!)

When the Submission stage closes, then the Peer-review stage begins! From Tuesday at 12:01pm CDT through Wednesday at midnight CDT- YOU are allowed to vote on randomized, unedited submissions from other participants- should you want to do so.

PLEASE, PLEASE NOTE: I’ll repeat this once again. If you CHOOSE to join the Peer-Review stage, you are choosing to wade through a largely unedited sludge of user-generated (in some cases loser-generated) content. Don’t write angry mails to me about someone else’s caption submission- it’s not my fault! We’re trying to get a little bit better about purging obvious garbage from the user-generated datafile (vulgar or racist stuff, etc.) But you still may occasionally run into something bothersome or unimaginably stupid. That’s the price one pays for the opportunity to help find and elevate the occasional bits of brilliance that will most certainly be buried in this mess.

Again, to those of you willing to brave the wasteland in search of genius, we’re quite grateful for your efforts. That is why- once the contest is complete- we will again offer, for a very brief window- a chance for you to get a framed 5×7 of the winning design for free. But I’m getting ahead of myself… Where was I? Oh yes… Thursday.

On Thursday, we will announce between 6 to 12 semi-finalists from amongst the top contest vote-getters. If you don’t want to read through raw captions but you do want to vote on semi-finalists, you are more than welcome to do so. A final vote will be held starting Thursday afternoon to determine the final contest winner!

All you need to do in order to submit your entry (or entries) is visit this link. Remember, you have until Monday at midnight to submit your suggested caption(s)!

And- once again I’m inviting my Twitter followers- should they want to- to you Retweet the CONTEST invitation below. By doing so, you’ll automatically be registered for a chance to win $200. Simply cut and paste the blue text below into your Twitter update window and tweet it to the world!

DESPAIR.COM CONTEST: Write the best caption for this pic to win $750! http://bit.ly/1hk74 (Retweet 4 chance 2 win $200)

(Yet again, let me remind you: In order to qualify for the Twitter drawing, you need have at least 5 followers. And if it looks like all 5 of your followers were generated by YOU hastily so they can have fake conversations with you, you’ll be disqualified. Let that be a life lesson!

Now. Let my aimless prattling cease and your caption submissions begin!

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.)