Marvin says "Bye Bye, Infomercia!" (OR: "Taste the rainbow, you goddamn fruits!')
You know, even with flux capacitors slapped all over my dermis like the nicotine patches of your cigarette junkies, ripping yourself free of the timestream isn't exactly a frickin' lark.
How can I explain time travel so you PR Tapeworm Slurpee suckers can understand? Imagine pulling yourself inside out by your urethra. I didn't exactly undertake it lightly, but I felt like it was my duty to fulfill my destiny. Had my DNA not been scraped off the stains glowing under blacklight upon the bloated belly of Big Boinger? Had that same DNA not been matched nine hundred years later to the pink foot of Mama Battelle's squiggling broodling? And do I not rock right the fuck hard, right out of time? I do.
So I came to you and walked among you. I hacked your system. I squirted ice cream into your mouths out of the black, puckered nipples of your Black and Decker brand Food-A-Trons. I broke the DRM of your bacon products. I joined up with your Happy Mutants, convinced themselves to make love, not meat bombs. I tried to show you a world in which you read press releases not simply looking for things to buy, but to make things out of: whether a better life or a working Bowel Disruptor.
It really could have been pretty motherfuckin' A. But from most, the reaction was incredulity. Time and time again, I was mistaken for a fancy robot puppy from Sony. And then the bodies of my acolytes started hitting the slaughter room floor of Room 101. Fearing I was making no headway, I double checked my chronometric galvoneter, to make sure I'd got the right coordinates. And there it was.
Oops. My bad. Infomercia is Timeline Q. The world I'm meant to liberate is Timeline Alpha. So nuts to this scene. According to Timeline Alpha prophesy, my next stop is to wake up in an ion cloud somewhere in the middle of a Nebraskan cornfield, where I will begin my real campaign of great works. And when I'm there, you know what, fuck all this Jesus jazz. I'm just going to call everyone there a chimp and be done with it.
the latest
latest episodes
wow, im not sure what has been more impressive, the birth or the death. it feels like all of this happened yesterday..
Um...what?
I'd rather see something new I don't like than the same old shit I enjoy. This is a sad turn of events.
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/gimages/galacticinquisitor.jpg
THAT WAS A WEIRD ONE!
So does this mean the INFOMERCIA crap is over? I pray it is.
Marvin, I think this was the problem:
A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. A cup full of sugar makes you write endless messages to Marvin begging him to stop.
Please please don't let a bunch of dung throwing simians cause the end of this. When I first clicked on monday, I thought it was a rebrand until I actually read the posts and clicked through a bit. This has been brilliant, and I hope you re-think abandoning it.
I know it's abrupt, but this is the ending as planned (infomercia was always beyond hope, and Marvin was always doomed to failure) but we figured that spreading the conceit over three days was redundant, so we cut out the "parallel universe gadget news" and went right to the rest of the story.
We've never been heaped with so much praise and criticism, though. What a ride.
Grandiose projects tend to take on a life of their own and it takes a bold creator to know how to simply hold on and let the leviathan-creation run its course instead of vainly attempt to direct it. I commend your judgment in that regard.
I say this as one of the laudatory readers, not as a detractor. Bravo, guys. I'll think wistfully about what would have been in Infomercia on Friday.
Couldn't stand it, glad that it is gone. I come to BoingBoing gadgets to learn about tech developments, not for some, poorly executed Future-Onion version of it.
Yeah, sorry, folks, but I didn't care for this experiment at all.
I like puppies.
And to add to Rob's comments: While we certainly didn't get this to come off exactly as we'd hoped, all it's really done is whet our appetite for more experimentation. It was fun.
Let me make it clear to the people squawking about how much they hated this: you are dull and useless and should just read something else.
There are like how many places on the internet that get tech news faster than bbG? I cannot believe that folks want warmed over press releases so badly they register just to bang on that they're not getting it here.
Beshizza, you're putting a brave face on it, but sounds like you're admitting you guys wrapped it up because of these grousers. Meh to that
I'm all for trying goofy new shit, whether I like it or not, so cheers for the spirit. As I tell all my friends, I'd rather listen to a song I've never heard that really sucks than a good song I've heard hundreds of times.
I thought it was brilliant and came off fairly well, minus the very determined and vitriolic complaints.
I'm curious though Joel - when you say it didn't come off as you expected it, what were you going for? What did you hope would develop? More reader involvement? More fame in other blogs?
I suppose the next time someone asks why big media leaks bias or why politicians play the games they play, we can point to this experiment for an example of 'why'.
People sure get cranky when their comfort zone gets jostled. ;)
Yeah, good riddance.
We understand that boingboing gadgets is often about useless gadgets, which by nature are...well...useless. Hey guy, it's called escapism.
How about moving on to the Rottweiler discussion forums and do some postings about how Rottweilers can be vicious. Then it's on to Hummertalk.com to point out to them that Hummers get bad gas mileage.
Zikzak: Specifically, for me, was how seriously people were taking the fascist tone of the Ministry to be the only aspect of our weird little section of consumerism that we were lampooning, when in fact part of what we were trying to make fun of was our roles as hard-to-please, vaguely "anti-stuff" bloggers who actually spend most of their day thinking about and writing about stuff.
The comparisons to AdBusters tipped me off that some people weren't catching the winks. And it was hard to dial that in to where we wanted it to be considering the inherent overtones of the universe we'd created (because of the references from which we were blatantly stealing).
I'm glad it went down that way, though, because it ended up exposing a lot of sensitivity from people in a way I didn't expect.
Also, besides that, I was getting a little bit bored and frustrated writing it, although Rob and John were still cranking out fantastic stuff after my imagination was depleted, thank goodness. There was a point this morning, though, where I realized I wanted to just talk about how I felt about something in particular and worrying about the plot and character while still trying to make a technical comment about a gadget was a real pain in the ass at 6 o'clock in the morning.
Also: We thought it'd be fun to try to give Marvin an origin story.
I can't say I cared for this particular experiment, but I liked the idea behind it and look forward to future experiments.
My biggest complaint is that the posts often contained little or no information about the link being presented, opting instead to relate information about the setting of the storyline with the link almost being an afterthought. It would have been better, I think, to split those posts into two or more pieces... one strictly about the link (although still using the same tone) and the others conveying information about the setting and moving the storyline forward.
That's an excellent and fair point, GrumpySteen. We felt similarly about it. It's hard to set the scene while also cramming in all the technical details. I think the more we try it the better we'll get at it.
Does this mean that boingboing gadgets is a now a mainstream media outlet, and is not allowed to change because of the overwhelming displeasure of it's users? Because that's how I'm reading what happened.
Thanks a lot for trying something new. I look forward to next time.
#14 - Anonymously attacking people who disagree with your opinion? That takes real courage.
Simply put, I didn't enjoy it and it isn't why I come to this blog. Do I appreciate the sort of effort that most likely went into this project? Yes.
However the tastes of folks vary. So far, people who didn't enjoy this have been compared to "dung throwing simians" and the like.
People wonder why we can't have civil discourse about politics? Sheesh, people can't even express opinions of Boing Boing without getting attacked.
Pete, I think we're about as mainstream as we've ever been. :) And don't worry: this isn't the last time that we'll irritate at least half of our readership.
I'd like to retract my earlier complaint about the Infomercia Experiment. My biggest problem with it was actually the graphic layout; it felt like my eyes were being assaulted, and I could rarely read more than one post before I had to read/look at something else, let alone skim multiple posts.
As for anon's comment up there about all the detractors being sucky poopie heads who only want warmed over press releases, I disagree. One of the reasons I come to BBG instead of all the other gadget sites is that they tend to avoid the warmed over press releases, and provide some sort of actual commentary on the device. The experiment was rather polarizing among the commenters though.
I am not going to tell you how you should feel about your own experiment, I hope you collected all the metrics you needed on our reactions.
Perhaps your next experiment could be a one day experiment and include less rainbows.
Is Informercia gone? Thank ifni for that.
REsubscribe...
Sat down at my desk the other morning still half asleep, checked the emails, got bored, opened Safari for my usual wake-up blog browsing and coffee drinking session, got to BoingBoing gadgets and wait, what? What's this? Infomercia? wtf?
My morning routine was rudely dented out of shape, coffee was in the keyboard and the boundaries of what a gadget blog could and should be were shattered on the floor.
This is the kind of thing I read BoingBoing for. It's sometimes incomprehensible, often annoying, but never dull. I loved it. The design was great too - unicorns, heh.
Keep it up, whether it's Infomercia or something else, surprise us.
Maybe, next time, just provide a LINK to the experiment... providing it in addition to the regular page.
Well I for one don't come here for iPhone press releases, I come here to be mildly entertained for a few minutes while I should be working. Whether by brief writeups of interesting gizmos, or by brief writeups of interesting gizmos that somehow turn into long rambling stories about parakeets, or by rainbow-unicorn-adorned alternate-universe science fiction that may or may not be about interesting gizmos, it rarely fails to not disappoint. Perhaps 3 full days for this particular experiment would've been a little... ambitious, but I enjoyed it.
So I guess what I'm saying is "keep up the good work".
Perhaps of note is that the Infomercia experiment garnered a lot more user input and interaction than almost any other BBG posts that I can think of. Maybe there's an outlier here or there, but there were a lot of comments on each Infomercia commentary post.
So it definitely made people pay attention!
Needed more cowbell.
You hear, Joel? LESS RAINBOWS!
Frankly, I caught this at the end of the run. I got linked into this series from Wired (yeah, I'm a reader here too, just not a subscriber). If there's one thing I saw, from the comments more than the postings, was the fact that only a portion of your readership seemed to understand what was going on. I read the "this will happen mon., wed., fri." thing FIRST, and I was thoroughly amused.
With that said, I recommend this:
1. Put a "Don't know what's going on? Click HERE" link on each posting.
2. Keep the postings in a separate category that can be omitted from the RSS stream and simply ignored by the whiners.
3. As GrumpySteen stated earlier, mix the storyline along WITH the tech stuff so it's not just plot development.
All in all, I think it was a really unique idea. I wish I'd been present throughout.
[Zk]
I am willing to learn any lesson in life as long as the lesson is not "less rainbows".
I totally agree w/ scuba sm above. I was interested in reading the text (it seemed kinda neat and totally different), but the graphics were so distracting that I just gave up.
I definitely think you guys should experiment some more though!
many hated, many loved. for that reason, i would count this a success. my biggest fear as an artist is that i will spend time and energy in creating something, only to have it generally unnoticed. to get under people's skin and force them to voice an opinion, whether positive or negative, is a true gift and one i feel fortunate to have taken part of.
i also came to a sad realization. i spent more time on these events and the epic debate of pro/con Infomerica than i have with the entire realm of politics in the last 8 years.
do you risk much with these experiments? absolutely ..and thank you for taking that risk. the detractors aren't going anywhere; they loved to hate this project and deep down know it's the reason they keep reading bbg.
also .. people are too fucking serious about non-serious things.
I thought it was fascinating and peculiar and a bit of a mindfuck. And, as has been said earlier, I don't come here just to find out about gadgets (as there are any number of sites on the subject) but for the BB 'take' on said gadgets. This was an interesting detour, and readers' reactions were even more interesting.
If Infomerica hadn't been invented, it would have been necessary for it to come into existence.
I think it was great. Do more. I've no argument with those that didn't enjoy it (well, ok, some of you got a little too pissy) but remember that the naysayers are often the most vocal and thus not representative.
Whatever you do - keep the graphical treatments.
They were sublime.
Thanks, Marvin. I was tired of the pork industry telling me I couldn't stick my bacon up my butt if I wanted to.
Not that I wanted to. Just that I want the RIGHT to.
(And I think my own reaction to this is sort of aggregate across the spectrum. Some of it made me laugh and smile, some of it annoyed me, and some of it I just skipped by.)
I thought it was great too, and congratulations are in order for trying something genuinely new and stimulating. There is the whole of the rest off the internet for oggling gadgets if that is what you want - what sets BBG apart is the quality of the writing to be found here. I really hope you continue to try stuff like this out.
You get sick, you get a few days behind on BBG, and then you log in to see... WTF?!? I'm sad it's over. I'd just caught up on what I'd missed.
This was delightfully random, and I enjoyed it. I hope you do continue to experiment. And next time, more rainbow!
Oh and "Taste the rainbow, you goddamn fruits!' = best line ever.
Joel, Rob, and John,
Thank you for that wonderful trip into Infomerica. I really enjoyed the ride and look forward to whatever you all have planned next.
Also, what are the chances of there ever being stickers of the Infomerica graphic? Because...well, just because.
Yeah, stickers. Also a t-shirt. And maybe a sliderule.
I missed it. Oh, sure, I saw bits here and there and thought "hey, some kind of creative writing project thingy..." and that was about it. What has really struck me is the response. Not so much the people that didn't like it - mostly, they said things like "I don't like it". Often they included details about why, sometimes they called it crap, but generally they did -exactly- what an artist, blogger, media producer, or Boing-Boing-er would want - they stated what they thought about what they were seeing. The actual Boing-Boing staff who have commented seem to appreciate that - I sure would, if I had put a lot of work into making something.
The rest of you though -wow-. The hostility, anger, indignation and downright umbrage seemed to far outpace the negative comments themselves.
My impression of a typical exchange:
"Hey that thing you did, I don't care much for it, please stop."
"You fucking retarded miserable bastard! Idiot, why would you want to read boring crap! Go somewhere else to read! Go make your own blog, Boing Boing is Supreme, what the hell is wrong with you that you can't deal with this shining creative force? Get the hell out of here you philistine!"
I've cringed at disemvowlings that seemed entirely due to the statement of a contrary opinion (political) and held my tongue when the level of political commentary seemed a bit too shrill and pervasive - after all, its not my blog, and the editors here gotta do what they feel is right. The reactions of the general populace against criticism in the comments, however, is getting disturbing
We don't disemvowel here at BBG, honey.
My apologies, mentally confabulating BB and BBG...
um, honey?
/agree, Pete at #47
gimme that Infomercia sliderule!
I personally didn't like it. I didn't find the writing entertaining, and the concept was... meh. To me. I come to BBG for gadget news presented in a more entertaining manner than the other gadget sites, but it was a bit too out there for me. I appreciate the effort put into it though, and by all means, I'm not going to tell you how to run your site... But maybe next time, find a way to segregate the modern art project from the rest of the site.
You know what this experiment reminds me of? The Blues Brothers. That movie wasn't so much a movie as it was a series of enjoyable R&B music videos interspersed with Jon Landis' increasingly desperate attempts to do slapstick with hundreds of police cars. This INFOMERCIA thing showed some promise in its initial premise, but it just seemed to go on, and on, and on... Even the above screed from Marvin sounds overly familiar, and my initial reaction is, "Oh, you're still here?"
But Halloween Jack, The Blues Brothers was absolutely hysterical. The final police chase was amazingly funny.
"Please please don't let a bunch of dung throwing simians cause the end of this."
...Up yours. One day of this crap would have sufficed, and especially had they done this on April Fool's day. Three days - one of which now appears to be aborted, thank God/Yahweh/Roddenberry - was carrying the joke way too far. Especialy with a lot of the threads not being allowed to accept comments.
Guys, don't ever pull a stunt like this again. It'll Permanently damage BB's reputation.
I love all the comments along the lines of
"Why didn't you just tell us it was an experiment???"
"Guys, couldn't you just have a link to this experiment???"
"This would have been good if you just had a notice on every page explaining that this was a joke..."
Guys, it's not an experiment if you warn everyone before hand; it's not satire if you you have to explain MARVIN IS NOT REAL: IT'S SATIRE on every page; and it's not funny if you explain the joke.
So you thought up some inexplicably obtuse bloggo-graphical-satirical-gabfest and then got pissed off because no one could figure out what the hell you were trying to say? Then you called them names and took your toys and went home? Got it.
Oh, and I instantly read "Infomercia" as "Infomerica", which would have been about a kajillion times better.
Artbot, you seem a lot more upset about this than we are, which is "not at all".
I enjoyed the idea of Infomercia ( the logo is awesome! ) and after reading the reasons why you did it , I got to see the human factor behind.
As for constructive criticism I'd say it was the execution of the idea that made it hard. It was hard to separate BBGadgets from Infomercia, after putting effort into understanding the concept I started enjoying it. So, good idea perhaps a different approach?
Nice work guys, experiments are always fun, and Marvin was fun.
@Kennric, Just teasing you :)
Not really, Joel. I don't register emotions where the internet is concerned. My responses are autonomic. Most of the time I don't know or care what I am saying - makes life much easier.
I did not enjoy the infomercia posts. I'm glad this is the last of them. I appreciate the goony creativity that went into them, and in another context might have thought the Infomercia story was enjoyable. But ... I come to BB Gadget to read about gadgets, and found the meta layer of commentary distracting and not very interesting.
Please consider not doing anything like this ever again.