Let's all kill Jonny 5.

January 19, 2011 4:10 AM

Metafilter is not for advertising. Damn, it appears I stepped in a publicity campaign. I'd rather not have.

I found the article interesting, but don't want to pepsiblue. Is deletion of the post an option?

posted by converge to MetaFilter-Related at 4:10 AM (32 comments total)

I think you're overcorrecting. The thread has already spawned a couple of worthwhile comments.
posted by jon1270 at 4:20 AM on January 19, 2011

I vote against deletion. Many of the articles we link to here are excerpts of books that have just been released and are part of their promotional campaigns.
posted by atrazine at 4:20 AM on January 19, 2011

I liked that post converge!
posted by Jofus at 4:33 AM on January 19, 2011

Advertising is not inherently evil. Much of it is very interesting. It's not helpful to hate things unilaterally.
posted by jbickers at 4:33 AM on January 19, 2011 [4 favorites]

Advertising is not inherently evil.

And hemorrhoids aren't a skin disease. But I don't want to get up close and personal with either of them.

I have no opinion about the thread in question.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:52 AM on January 19, 2011 [11 favorites]

Many, if not most, interesting things on the internet are promoting one thing or another. If everyone just sat quietly on their work and waited to be discovered instead of getting out there and selling it, a lot of it would languish unnoticed.
posted by Metroid Baby at 4:57 AM on January 19, 2011 [2 favorites]

Also, I kind of enjoy articles publicizing just-released books, because I can read the article and decide I don't need to read the book.
posted by Metroid Baby at 4:59 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

Just because Turkle is promoting a book, that doesn't disqualify her argument from being the best of the Web. The FPP was interesting, you aren't shilling for her, and it should stay up.
posted by haltingproblemsolved at 7:23 AM on January 19

Eponysterically quoted for truth. It's a totally kosher post
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:06 AM on January 19, 2011

To answer your question though you can use the contact form and request that your post be removed. The mods will put a note on it that says "removed due to poster's request" or some such.

It looks like it's going well enough, so I;d just walk away for a while.
posted by cjorgensen at 5:13 AM on January 19, 2011

I once fell in love with Sherry Turkle but I was promptly repulsed to find she was not the robot I had imagined so it's all good.
posted by vapidave at 5:14 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

Advertising is not inherently evil

Some of those robots are, though. I still remember Tom Selleck's acting in Runaway. *shudder*
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:19 AM on January 19, 2011

I fell in love with a girl--fell in love once and almost completely. She's in love with the world, but sometimes these feelings can be so misleading.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:20 AM on January 19, 2011 [2 favorites]

I blame Denis Dutton. Awfully inconsiderate of him just up and dying like that.
posted by timsteil at 6:03 AM on January 19, 2011

Without this silly meta I would never have found either this or this quixotic post - thanks nattie.
posted by adamvasco at 6:43 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

I still remember Tom Selleck's mustache in Runaway. *shudder*
posted by shakespeherian at 6:44 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

"I will not synergize marketing campaigns" is a totally fine personal philosophy for you to embrace, but it doesn't really have anything to do with whether a post made in good faith that people seem to be enjoying should be deleted. I think it'd make a lot more sense to go ahead and leave that one up.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:03 AM on January 19, 2011

If you kill the post you kill Nattie's awesome comment. That would make me sad.
posted by charred husk at 7:20 AM on January 19, 2011 [5 favorites]

"I will not synergize marketing campaigns"

A hundred times on the backboard now.
posted by The Whelk at 7:27 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

And since this isn't the thread itself but is related, I'll post my "not quite appropriate for the thread" story here:

I once had a Furby named Koko given as a gift from my father. As a technical exercise, I managed to develop its speech patterns into mostly English.

Then I began the sensory deprivation experiment.

I locked Koko into an unused desk drawer and stored him away with the on switch left on. I would check every few months to make sure that the battery wasn't dead. Sometimes, if there was a loud sound or a bump on the table, we would hear Koko begin making sounds. "Doo-doo-doo! Me, Koko! Play with me! Going to sleep."

Eventually I forgot about Koko and he ended up sitting in that drawer for two years. When I eventually pulled him out and replaced the batteries, I had this vision of his eyes popping wide open while he began emitting unintelligible screams. But I viewed him as just a thing and thought it would be funny - there was no actual emotion or pain on his part.

But after reading Nattie's comment I now feel like a fucking monster.
posted by charred husk at 7:28 AM on January 19, 2011 [4 favorites]

It's funny that you just said "synergize" in that context cortex. Well met, sir!
posted by Mister_A at 7:31 AM on January 19, 2011

I found the article interesting

That's what the spammers say on my blog comments, and I like to pretend that Justin Bieber ([e-mail]) and Dr. Dre ([e-mail]) really did find it interesting.
posted by Brocktoon at 7:44 AM on January 19, 2011

True Furby Story:

I bought my wife a Furby because I thought she would love it. She hated it and kept it in a closet. Everytime she threatened to throw it away I (playfully) sulked.

One day, my wife is carrying a bag of garbage to the front door when something in the bag starts to scream "NOOOO! HEEEELLLLLLLP! NOOOOOOOO!"

The horrified look on her face is one of the top-ten most priceless moments from our marriage.

(Note: When a Furby gets turned upside-down, it cries for help. It must have gotten topsy-turvied in the trash bag.)
posted by DWRoelands at 7:46 AM on January 19, 2011 [36 favorites]

I still remember Tom Selleck's acting in Runaway.

Yes, but Gene Simmons totally made up for it. And that was when Simmons without Kiss makeup was still a novelty, so there's that going for it.
posted by TedW at 7:48 AM on January 19, 2011

Advertising is not inherently evil. Much of it is very interesting. It's not helpful to hate things unilaterally.

I take your nominally moderate viewpoint and turn it back on itself: Advertising itself is unilateral. It is about "spreading the message" not about two-way communication and therefore inherently suppressive of others.
posted by DU at 7:54 AM on January 19, 2011

There were only one or two comments on the book, and they weren't particularly snarky. This, on the other hand, looks a little like an ad for your FPP :P
posted by londonmark at 8:19 AM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

I went to see TRUE GRIT yesterday, took my seat maybe ten minutes before show time -- which earned me ten minutes of REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING advertising (just like TV only way bigger and louder). Then came the COMING SOONS, which I always find (at the least) interesting in a cultural sense (ie: they don't just fill me in on what the great Hollywood dream machine thinks I should care about; they actually alert me to some stuff I suddenly want to see).

My point: some advertising is EVIL because it imposes itself on your consciousness whether you want it or not, some is actually pretty useful because it speaks to something you have conscious interest in.
posted by philip-random at 8:24 AM on January 19, 2011

Just don't post this.
posted by cjorgensen at 2:28 PM on January 19, 2011

suppressive

You are a Scientologist and I claim my five squid.
posted by Wolof at 3:03 PM on January 19, 2011

Don't be glib.
posted by maryr at 8:34 PM on January 19, 2011

Can we get a symbol like jessamyn's star so we can tell who the crouton-petters are?
posted by lukemeister at 9:21 PM on January 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

Well now I see the post has generated a sidebar comment (and rightly so), which makes it more of a success than any of my posts.
posted by TedW at 7:31 AM on January 20, 2011

I just finished reading all the comments, and that was a really interesting discussion. It was a good post!
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 7:00 PM on January 22, 2011