Yahoo logo FPP puts words in CEO's mouth, outrage and ridicule ensues. September 6, 2013 8:10 AM Subscribe

Yahoo logo FPP: Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer discusses how she redesigned the new Yahoo! logo over a weekend. But in the actual linked post itself, she describes getting together with the logo team, mentions everyone by name, and uses the word 'we' everywhere.

posted by Anything to Etiquette/Policy at 8:10 AM (82 comments total)

'posted in their current form'
posted by Anything at 8:11 AM on September 6, 2013

Won't somebody please think of the CEOs?!
posted by entropicamericana at 8:13 AM on September 6, 2013 [14 favorites]

Won't somebody please think of the posting guidelines?
posted by Anything at 8:14 AM on September 6, 2013 [10 favorites]

Hey, I know it's frustrating when a post is not framed in a way that comes across clearly, and the ensuing discussion often suffers. But this is one of the quirks of life here, we don't really "replace" posts after they have been up for many hours. Just wanted to set expectations properly - that post will not get replaced because that isn't something that happens here, for better or worse.

We can still talk about advice for framing future posts more clearly, here in MeTa.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:14 AM on September 6, 2013

I think you just have to take it with a grain of whimsy.
posted by Kabanos at 8:15 AM on September 6, 2013 [9 favorites]

Hey, I know it's frustrating when a post is not framed in a way that comes across clearly, and the ensuing discussion often suffers. But this is one of the quirks of life here, we don't really "replace" posts after they have been up for many hours. Just wanted to set expectations properly - that post will not get replaced because that isn't something that happens here, for better or worse.

Yeah, but you certainly delete them when the framing is blatantly wrong.
posted by kbanas at 8:15 AM on September 6, 2013 [18 favorites]

it seems like if you take the meta commentary about reframing the post out of this, then this would make a good comment in the thread - you only sort of obliquely refer there to what you spell out explicitly here about credit and teams, etc.
posted by nadawi at 8:15 AM on September 6, 2013

LobsterMitten, it's not merely 'unclear', it's claiming something having been said by the subject of the post that she did not say, and the entire thread has been defined by that, to its detriment.
posted by Anything at 8:16 AM on September 6, 2013 [3 favorites]

posted by Kabanos

posted by kbanas

You guys are kind of confusing.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:18 AM on September 6, 2013 [11 favorites]

And it doesn't help that it's coming from BP - a guy who wears his bias on his sleeve - who probably gets a snort and a chuckle out of framing it in such a way as to lambaste Mayer.
posted by kbanas at 8:18 AM on September 6, 2013 [4 favorites]

but you certainly delete them when the framing is blatantly wrong.

they could, but they've discussed in other metas that it's not an automatic delete -if it's something that is flagged or brought up soon enough and the original poster requests some clarifying language, the mods have done that a few times - and they've also deleted things for being horribly mis-framed, but they've also left things with a very similar statement like the one they gave here. it seems perfectly inline with metafilter's moderation polices.
posted by nadawi at 8:18 AM on September 6, 2013

to be fair, its not like the headline of the post was " Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer discusses how she, by her lonesome, redesigned the new Yahoo! logo over a weekend"
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:18 AM on September 6, 2013

On a personal level, I love brands, logos, color, design, and, most of all, Adobe Illustrator. I think it’s one of the most incredible software packages ever made. I’m not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous :)

So, one weekend this summer, I rolled up my sleeves and dove into the trenches with our logo design team: (etc.)

I don't think anyone in the thread has a misconception that Mayer personally did everything here. But what is so extraordinarily odd, really and truly, is that the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company would get involved in this process, announce it on her personal blog and lead off with anecdotes about herself. And of course, we know the intern made the video or whatever (Helluva job Brownie!).

It really boggles the mind.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 8:18 AM on September 6, 2013 [6 favorites]

nadawi, I did refer to that more clearly in the thread, but that comment was deleted, presumably as meta.
posted by Anything at 8:19 AM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

buh. When I worked with a cio at my last job, "we worked with him" in that we were trapped while he poked around in visual studio trying to recall how to connect to a database in turbo pascal. Later on, when things turned into a horror-show, there was a lot of "we". That day, there was a lot of "him", but you guys stick around just in case.

Basically, I don't want a C-level to sit down next to me and say "let's make some goddamn sausage!" Don't care if it really is fully collaborative, don't care if she bought pad thai from that great new place and took us to the Great Eggscape for breakfast. Write a spec and let professionals do their job.
posted by boo_radley at 8:21 AM on September 6, 2013 [6 favorites]

Again, just setting expectations -- the delete-or-not decision is almost always made within the first two hours or so of a post's life. (There are occasional exceptions.) This post has been up overnight (my time) and it would be really out of line with our usual practice to delete it at this point.

We've had posts about things that turned out to be hoaxes, etc, where the post is not deleted -- the customary response to its being misleading is to clarify in the comments.

If you leave a comment clarifying what really happened (what part Mayer played vs others), and leave out the metacommentary ("this post should be deleted, I flagged it", that kind of thing), that would be a good addition to the thread.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:21 AM on September 6, 2013 [3 favorites]

This seems like a strange pile of beans to be shoving around the plate, to be honest. The person in question posted it on her personal Tumblr, and regardless of the pronoun used is pretty obviously driving the bus at Yahoo!. Attributing her comments on her personal Tumblr to her -- when she is the head of the entire company and has the power to fire any employee on a whim -- doesn't seem like the egregious massacre of Truth you seem to be hoping it is.

It also feels a little weird that you went Full MeTa without actually, you know, actually explaining your issues in the thread itself first. Wouldn't it have been more productive to try to clarify things there first? You've got one kind of oblique comment, but this kind of riffs like somebody calling the cops because a neighbour's weeds are too high instead of asking them to mow the damn lawn.

On preview, apparently your comment to that effect got deleted. But still, this feels like a lot of gun.
posted by Shepherd at 8:21 AM on September 6, 2013 [2 favorites]

And guys, let's keep the discussion of the Mayer thing in the actual MeFi thread, only the meta stuff belongs here.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:22 AM on September 6, 2013

I agree with this callout. The post framing makes it sound like she's claiming she did the redesign by herself, and the comments are full of this assumption. But the post itself says something very different.
posted by sweetkid at 8:22 AM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

I saw your deleted comment, Anything, and didn't get what you were on about. I get it more or less now, but I actually did not notice the post said "she", or at least did not take that to mean Mayer was attempting to take all credit for herself. To me, it read neutrally, except for the title, which are Mayer's own words.
posted by donnagirl at 8:23 AM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

I agree with you, Anything. The FPP could have been constructed more fairly to Mayer. But that's only half the problem. Part of the reason we got this framing was Mayer's own presentation. Yes, she credited her team, but she didn't just credit her team. She also patted herself on the back. She should have had the foresight to know that when she wrote things like, "I rolled up my sleeves," and "I’m not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous," as the CEO it's going to come off like she's taking a substantial share of the credit.

Put differently, when you're the captain you have a heightened obligation to be careful about using the word "I" when discussing credit, and Mayer fell down a bit. So yeah, the story is framed poorly, but that problem didn't originate on MetaFilter.
posted by cribcage at 8:28 AM on September 6, 2013 [6 favorites]

cribcage: She should have had the foresight to know that when she wrote things like, "I rolled up my sleeves," and "I’m not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous," as the CEO it's going to come off like she's taking a substantial share of the credit.

Not to mention the fact that it was posted on her personal Tumblr, and not on some Yahoo Design Department blog or whatever.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:30 AM on September 6, 2013

I think we all know she didn't literally design it on her own, but her blog post makes it clear that she was heavily involved and is keen on taking equal credit with her design team (where "equal" in CEO terms is 95% me, 5% the other guys).

That said, there would be an interesting discussion to have comparing Steve Job's involvement in the design process and the credit he received vs. Mayer's.
posted by Think_Long at 8:31 AM on September 6, 2013 [4 favorites]

cribcage, I mostly agree, and that aspect of it should've been discussed in a thread where everyone has a more or less accurate impression of what she wrote.
posted by Anything at 8:32 AM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

Well that was my comment (my first ever MeTa callout!), and I made it after reading the FA, the one in which Mayer discusses the process she and her team followed, and while she does mention the team by name, it still reads, to me, as me first, then the team:

We hadn’t updated our logo in 18 years. Our brand, as represented by the logo, has been valued at as much as ~$10 billion dollars. So, while it was time for a change, it’s not something we could do lightly.

On a personal level, I love brands, logos, color, design, and, most of all, Adobe Illustrator. I think it’s one of the most incredible software packages ever made. I’m not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous :)

So, one weekend this summer, I rolled up my sleeves and dove into the trenches with our logo design team: Bob Stohrer, Marc DeBartolomeis, Russ Khaydarov, and our intern Max Ma. We spent the majority of Saturday and Sunday designing the logo from start to finish, and we had a ton of fun weighing every minute detail.

Mayer first, then those other folks and an intern. The FPP is an accurate, if linkbaity, representation of the underlying FA.
posted by notyou at 8:34 AM on September 6, 2013 [5 favorites]

Anything: cribcage, I mostly agree, and that aspect of it should've been discussed in a thread where everyone has a more or less accurate impression of what she wrote.

I think they do, or at least they should, if they read the article as intended. If their interpretation of what she wrote is different from yours, I don't think that is the post's fault.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:36 AM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

Anything: “LobsterMitten, it's not merely 'unclear', it's claiming something having been said by the subject of the post that she did not say, and the entire thread has been defined by that, to its detriment.”

Huh? That's simply not true. She did redesign it over a weekend. She says so in the link. That she did so with a team doesn't change the essential fact. She redesigned the logo over the weekend. She makes a big deal about the fact that she personally had agency in doing so. That's what the post highlighted.

You may have sensed an implication because the team was not mentioned in the post, but unintentional implications are not the province of posting guidelines, and you cannot credibly say that BP was lying with his post. It wasn't even lying by omission. The essential facts communicated by the post were true.

'People need to read the article' is an entirely separate issue. This was not a guideline-breaking post.
posted by koeselitz at 8:38 AM on September 6, 2013 [5 favorites]

Yeah, I think now we're moving into the larger problem of people commenting without reading the links. If your point is that we should accept those people just aren't going to read the links, and so cater to them by taking extra care to compose FPPs fairly and accurately...I agree with that.
posted by cribcage at 8:39 AM on September 6, 2013

She should have had the foresight to know that when she wrote things like, "I rolled up my sleeves," and "I’m not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous," as the CEO it's going to come off like she's taking a substantial share of the credit.

That, and the understanding (which I'm entirely sure she has) that when you are The Boss, even using the magic pronoun "we" doesn't change the fact that the buck stops with you. Were she a sleeves-rolling, dangerous-knowledge team member on the same pay grade as everyone else on the team, I have no doubt that the FPP would have been framed a bit differently.

But this is the boss sitting in the room with the employees working "together" on a design. At the end of the weekend, emerging with rumpled sleeves and a deep appreciation of whimsy, anything that went out that door hangs on her. That's why she makes, as they say, the big bucks.

If you have veto and do-this-or-you're-fired power over everyone else in the room, you can use the words "we" and "team" until the cows come home, but I feel totally comfortable holding you responsible for the results.
posted by Shepherd at 8:39 AM on September 6, 2013 [8 favorites]

(Okay, sometimes "unintentional implications" are the subject of posting guidelines, but certainly not in cases like this.)
posted by koeselitz at 8:39 AM on September 6, 2013

notyou, to me that merely reflects the fact that she's writing about her own perspective, not about any order of credit. As far as I can tell, the post leaves the question of credit entirely open.
posted by Anything at 8:40 AM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

It's not like Mayer's blog piece was twelve pages of long-form journalism. It's 600 words. You can read it in less than a minute. I don't think this is a case where people are baited by the framing, not reading the links, and diving in with the wrong idea.

The discussion about Mayer is grounded in the bizarre way she inserts herself into this announcement. It's astonishing that she discusses her layman's interest in design before introducing her team. The discussion about her and her involvement is entirely germane to the link.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 8:43 AM on September 6, 2013 [3 favorites]

And like I mentioned in the thread, I will argue that the post being misleading can be seen from the vast difference in tone on actual design blogs, not being influenced by the framing in the FPP vs. the thread, which was.
posted by Anything at 8:44 AM on September 6, 2013

The FPP is an accurate, if linkbaity, representation of the underlying FA.
posted by notyou at 11:34 AM on September 6 [1 favorite +] [!]

I disagree with this statement.

On preview: What Anything said is what I got from the article, her narrative framing comes from perspective, and not entitlement/responsibility/credit, which is how the post is framed and is entirely inaccurate.
posted by FirstMateKate at 8:44 AM on September 6, 2013 [2 favorites]

FirstMateKate: “On preview: What Anything said is what I got from the article, her narrative framing comes from perspective, and not entitlement/responsibility/credit, which is how the post is framed and is entirely inaccurate.”

How in the world is responsibility or credit implied more in the tiny, accurate snippet that is the post? It doesn't mention or discuss credit at all.
posted by koeselitz at 8:46 AM on September 6, 2013

I now think that everyone is reading this in light of their own personal baggage, and that if you're worked up about design, or non-designers doing design, or about the perils of being a female CEO, or about the ridiculousness of people who think it's "fun" to work all weekend, that you'll insert that baggage into the very very few words of the post and take it from there. I thought the logo was horrifically kerned but that non-designers (like me) shouldn't try to design, so it seemed neutral to me.

On the whole though, I believe it was so far from a Bad Post or a Post in Bad Faith that you can't really even see that place from there.
posted by donnagirl at 8:51 AM on September 6, 2013 [3 favorites]

if metafilter is the absolute only place that someone ran into the news about the yahoo logo than they only look at metafilter - you can't swing an exclamation point without hitting a headline about it. so, i don't really buy the idea that people were so tainted by 15-26 (half of which was a direct quote) word post that they rushed in with egregiously wrong ideas and then formed their opinion on the logo based on what you argue is a bad framing (while some who have obviously read the links disagree with you). just because "actual design blogs" have a different tone doesn't mean that the well was poisoned. i'd also argue that you've not read a representative sample if you feel like there's some sort of consensus among professional designers about how much they like or dislike the new logo.
posted by nadawi at 8:56 AM on September 6, 2013

I thought it was a great post. How often do you ever get a chance to seriously discuss proper kerning?
posted by KokuRyu at 9:03 AM on September 6, 2013 [2 favorites]

On Metafilter? Every couple months.
posted by maryr at 9:09 AM on September 6, 2013 [7 favorites]

The framing on this post would be improved if it was beveled, was 13px wide and tilted at 3 degrees for a bit of whimsy.
posted by GuyZero at 9:09 AM on September 6, 2013 [10 favorites]

notyou, to me that merely reflects the fact that she's writing about her own perspective, not about any order of credit. As far as I can tell, the post leaves the question of credit entirely open.

The Great Gatsby is from Nick Carroway's perspective, and he managed to keep the focus on Gatsby, where it belonged.

Compare:

"I rolled up sleeves and got in the trenches."

"I sat in with the team as they worked through the design."
posted by notyou at 9:14 AM on September 6, 2013

"And I learned so much about kerning..."
posted by notyou at 9:17 AM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

Geez. It's her personal blog, not a novel.
posted by Anything at 9:17 AM on September 6, 2013

Also it's standard CEO speak. Also it probably wouldn't be big time news but some people hate Mayer and some people hate seeing women in power and some of those people overlap.

Terrible framing on that post.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:20 AM on September 6, 2013 [3 favorites]

it's claiming something having been said by the subject of the post that she did not say,

Even setting aside the particulars of this case -- the CEO, three employees, and an intern go into a room for a weekend. Are you seriously suggesting that the CEO is not the one calling the shots in that room?
posted by ook at 9:20 AM on September 6, 2013

However, the impression pretty much everyone in the thread seems to have gotten, understandably, given the FPP, is pretty much the opposite. Quoth one comment, even after I had pointed that out:

"I don't know anything about logos and wordmarks and typography, so I'm just going to be curious about why the CEO is so keen to claim the credit here, good or bad. Even if she designed this on her own, on her iPad, she should be shining the spotlight on her team, not herself.

I'm not reading this quote as being consistent with your thesis. The poster is curious why the CEO is claiming design credit - which she clearly is, even if it's not all of it, and is clearly not the job of a CEO. Furthermore, they think credit should go to the team (so the commenter knows there's a team involved) even if they CEO had done this on an ipad on her own (i.e. they know she didn't). It's actually a point I very much agree with - if you are a great boss you help those under you with their job and then let them take all the credit: you don't need any praise, you're the boss - and not what your MeTa is complaining about.
posted by Dr Dracator at 9:23 AM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

Personally, I like Marissa Mayer, probably because she succeeded as a result of hard work and talent, and she's about my age. I'm also curious to see what she can do with Yahoo.

But this logo thing, and that Tumblr post, is just bizarre. The new logo just looks... wrong.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:25 AM on September 6, 2013 [2 favorites]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned - and perhaps this is in the post already - that this is exactly what Meyer was famous/infamous for at Google, i.e. 43 shades of blue. She's very well-known for being hands-on with these types of design decisions. Also, contrary to the movies, hardly anyone in a modern company actually every works alone.

This callout is splitting hairs on the heads of angels dancing on the head of a pin.
posted by GuyZero at 9:25 AM on September 6, 2013

In other news, today the White House denied responsibility for over 200 years of political mistakes, military errors, loose wording, and metonymy in general. "I'm just a house," it said.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 9:26 AM on September 6, 2013 [12 favorites]

Also it's standard CEO speak.

It totally is. The "I know enough to be dangerous" bit is a classic. It's not anything especially devilish or egotastic - to be a CEO you have to be pretty egotastic.
posted by sweetkid at 9:38 AM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

Kabanos: "I think you just have to take it with a grain of whimsy."

I read this as "I think you just have to take it with a grain whisky".
While I prefer single malts over single grains or blends I do support this approach.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:19 AM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

The Great Gatsby is from Nick Carroway's perspective, and he managed to keep the focus on Gatsby, where it belonged.

Compare:

"I rolled up sleeves and got in the trenches."

"I sat in with the team as they worked through the design."

The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in one of the most famous and popular American novels of all time. That seems to be setting the bar unfairly high. Maybe a Dan Brown comparison would be more apt.

"Renowned CEO Marissa Meyer had endured the savage splendor of the old logo for 18 years, 'It's clobberin time' she said, looking first at her team of albino graphic designers and then to her red cup."
posted by ActingTheGoat at 10:31 AM on September 6, 2013 [11 favorites]

Geez. It's her personal blog, not a novel.

Geez. And this is a website with posts from random people, not an encyclopaedia or Source Of Truth. If you can chill out about the poor framing on her site, maybe you can try doing the same for people here who probably* don't even have an editorial/PR staff going over their posts before publishing?

*I don't want to assume anything.
posted by jacalata at 11:09 AM on September 6, 2013

I have a team of people who I work with on these posts. Mainly over the weekend.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:11 AM on September 6, 2013 [6 favorites]

I thought posts that were just "look at this asshole" were frowned on around here.
posted by kagredon at 11:12 AM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

One comment deleted; let's not call people assholes, it doesn't help.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:22 AM on September 6, 2013

(I don't think the framing was misleading in the way that Anything suggests, I just don't really get why it's "best of the web" beyond the fact that most people don't much care for Marissa Meyer.)
posted by kagredon at 11:25 AM on September 6, 2013

Arguably because once upon a time, for many people Yahoo was the Web. I assume we'd have a similar post if Apple one day eschews the apple, or if FedEx abandons the arrow.
posted by cribcage at 11:50 AM on September 6, 2013

Monsieur Caution: ""I'm just a house," it said."

Clearly false - the White House is ALSO an office building.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:07 PM on September 6, 2013

The only reason I know anything about Yahoo's logo redesign is that there were two FPPs on the topic, which generated hundreds of comments. It's an interesting dynamic. Corporate logo redesigns are inherently ridiculous things, and a lot of the comments are to that effect, but most of the ire seemed directed at the company's CEO, whose job description covers stupid crap like that, and very little to the posters who thought that a trivial corporate logo redesign was worthy of all our attention.
posted by leopard at 12:13 PM on September 6, 2013 [4 favorites]

Yahoo! blue. Lots of free publicity about an in-house maneuver. Clever.
posted by Cranberry at 12:15 PM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

That is true. I did check out the Yahoo homeopage for the first time in a long time. It might as well be 2001, except for the link to "frequent twerking accidents" above the fold.
posted by KokuRyu at 12:28 PM on September 6, 2013

To weigh in late: Jokey FPP text appears to be perfectly acceptable FPP text.
posted by Artw at 1:09 PM on September 6, 2013

Arguably because once upon a time, for many people Yahoo was the Web. I assume we'd have a similar post if Apple one day eschews the apple, or if FedEx abandons the arrow.

But would we get a whole FPP about it if Apple changed the curve on the bite taken out of the apple by a few degrees and they put out a press release dressed up as a slightly daft blog post by Tim Cook?

Actually, we probably would, I guess, so I retract my objection.
posted by kagredon at 1:18 PM on September 6, 2013

most of the ire seemed directed at the company's CEO

Silicon Valley may as well be a fandom like Marvel and DC. Stans have strong, often irrational feelings about the multitude of powerful characters, all interconnected. Undercurrents of misogyny, racism, etc.

For personal reasons I used to harbor deep animosity toward the Valley. Now that I see it as a fandom, it's actually very entertaining. Yesterday gave us shirtless Tyler Winklevoss at the Burning Man, and the heartwarming story of Dustin Moskovitz meeting the Winklevoss twins for the first time. Last week was the juicy gossip about Sergey Brin's romantic life. Endless fandom wank.

Marissa is one of my favorite characters in this fandom. Endearingly awkward and unapologetically competent. Like a teeniefic Mary Sue, except she's a real person! #hatersgonnahate
posted by fatehunter at 1:30 PM on September 6, 2013

why is this meta here?

sheesh...call it out in the thread.
posted by lampshade at 1:41 PM on September 6, 2013

it was called out in the thread and the comment was deleted. So we're here.
posted by sweetkid at 1:47 PM on September 6, 2013

why is this meta here?

sheesh...call it out in the thread.

Because this is what MeTa is for and because my callout in the thread was deleted as meta, because it belonged here instead.

Also, uh, preview.
posted by Anything at 1:50 PM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

Undercurrents of misogyny, racism, etc.

I don't see that in my post, but maybe I wasted more time on reading the links than the comments others made. Still, that seems a pretty lazy accusation to make, for lack of specific and explicit examples of misogyny and racism on the part of the specific person to whom you are (not) assigning these attributes. Not saying you're wrong, but I'd still like to see some cites.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:56 PM on September 6, 2013

Also, uh, preview.

also, uh, realize that it was deleted for a reason.
posted by lampshade at 2:01 PM on September 6, 2013

You are free to post a callout on my behalf again to have it deleted again. I did that once already :/
posted by Anything at 2:04 PM on September 6, 2013

no

have fun
posted by lampshade at 2:07 PM on September 6, 2013

Also it's standard CEO speak. Also it probably wouldn't be big time news but some people hate Mayer and some people hate seeing women in power and some of those people overlap.

This kinda highlights a reason this MeTa confuses me. It's like there's this giant elephant in the room that making fun of this logo and her bizarre post is somehow sexist, but no one actually wants to come out and say it or call anyone or anything out.(this post in the actual thread kinda hints at that) There's a lot of it bubbling out around the edges in this thread too.

This is a silly bizarre post bout the logo even in businessspeak, which i've read quite a bit of over the years. The entire thing is kinda just bizarre internet theater and the logo is crap.

I don't know if it's best of the web, but it's weird and worth looking at for a minute. And everyone has to go and assign weird meaning to the post and the comments that are mostly making fun of the use of the phrase whimsy.

Seriously, what a weird MeTa.
posted by emptythought at 2:19 PM on September 6, 2013 [2 favorites]

This kinda highlights a reason this MeTa confuses me. It's like there's this giant elephant in the room that making fun of this logo and her bizarre post is somehow sexist, but no one actually wants to come out and say it or call anyone or anything out.(this post in the actual thread kinda hints at that) There's a lot of it bubbling out around the edges in this thread too.

Eh, yeah and no. I'm in the camp that this is still kind of falling on the side of "let's laugh at people we don't like doing a PR move that fell flat", but I don't think it's due to sexism--there might be a little bit of that, but Yahoo! has been a punchline for many years now, and Meyer generated a lot of ill-will with the childcare blow-up, so I'm pretty sure people would still be jumping on board to mock if the CEO was Martin Meyer.
posted by kagredon at 3:03 PM on September 6, 2013

It's a good post - my take on it is that its a niche post for the benefit of anyone creative thats ever had to work with a ceo or whatever and there's that awful dynamic of it all being about them etc etc - if you've never had that kind of crummy experience, it might read as something else - but i really doubt bp would have intended that as im sure bp does design and things like that.

My only complaint about the post is it brought back memories of the festival director regaling me with his wonderful idea of a photo of a michael clark audience that was going to bring in lots of advertisers and money ... or trying to help out an scottish literary class warrior type who was too busy telling me about his wonderful mastery of movie making on an iphone3 to actually look at any footage of anything.

So anyway, my take on it is its specifically a post aimed at people with experience of that - so that we may experience our own personal horrifying flashbacks ...and mostly the comments bear that out.
posted by sgt.serenity at 5:21 PM on September 6, 2013

It's ironic, because I totally agree with you that it drives me bonkers when there's factually incorrect information in an FPP and the mods won't delete it. AND YET, the post in question here really doesn't have the problem you're insisting it does, and thus you have perfectly demonstrated why the mods have the policy they do.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:10 PM on September 6, 2013

She didn't do it all by herself, but she explicitly states in the blog post that she was very heavily involved in the process. The result, as I noted, looks like someone who didn't know what they were doing designed it in a weekend, which indicates to me that the design team were either too intimidated or worn out to do anything to salvage the thing from looking amateurish. Anyone who has worked in a situation like that with any client, especially one with that much power, can tell you that its' not an environment that makes for quality work.
posted by louche mustachio at 9:19 PM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

imagine this: a corporate big cheese said something that was not bare laden truth.
imagine this: some big company that derives its income on advertisement is less than honest about some font change.
imagine this: a thread that might produce a confused impression of the CEO and the company in question with the lynch-pin being a font choice.

People get bad info because these corporate turds feed us that. If a thread is not wholly pure and perfect, well gee, I suppose that sucks. That is life and par for the course these days. However, given the source for the basis for that thread is a new story from an, of course unibiased news entity (kak....kak), I can only assume the MeFi thread is going to be perfect and honest. So there is that!

But wait...it was not even an unbiased news source....it was some corporate hack blog.

Yup, yup, yup, yup, yup. Oh I get it now. Stupid Mefi in....Stupid Meta out.

Worthless MeFi thread. Worthless Meta thread.

good night
posted by lampshade at 11:15 PM on September 6, 2013

This happens a lot. A poorly framed post, contributors who comment without bothering to read or comprehend the source materials, an unsuccesful attempt or two to rerail the thread and then yet more comments based on previous comments but not the source materials. It is annoying, I wish it happened less, I cannot think of a solution.
posted by BenPens at 8:05 AM on September 7, 2013

As far as the framing of this post goes, I think it should be Just Fine to poke a little lighthearted fun at ultra-powerful people, every now and again. Particularly those who dabble in a field where they show themselves to have no skill, no taste and — in this case, yes — who claim most of the credit by pushing through their ideas, no how poorly thought out they might be, and then effectively pat themselves on the back for a poor end result.

The only thing I'm sorry about is seeing a couple of the usual suspects get away with equating that with racism and sexism, jumping in and more or less poisoning the thread, while not offering any evidence of these behaviors by users on this site, before running away. That says a lot about their character. I can think of a solution, but thankfully for these people the community seems to endorse their kind of bullying in this thread and in others, so it will continue unimpeded and unchallenged.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:36 AM on September 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

jumping in and more or less poisoning the thread, while not offering any evidence of these behaviors by users on this site, before running away

Oooo, boy.
posted by kbanas at 7:57 AM on September 8, 2013

I can think of a solution, but thankfully for these people the community seems to endorse their kind of bullying in this thread and in others, so it will continue unimpeded and unchallenged.

Open your own MeTa about this. This has been an ongoing slow burn axegrind about this issue and we'd like you to maybe spend some time/effort in spelling it out and not just do this constant "What's he on about" sniping and going after other people. It's toxic and it's starting to be a problem. Not even disagreeing about your general point but the whole second paragraph is just coy and unhelpful. You know where the contact form is, if you've got solutions, talk to us.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:35 AM on September 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

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