5 ms·

Was it really necessary to mention the fact that his girlfriend sleeps topless?

by luigi 15y ago

nhangen 15y ago
I thought that was strange as well, especially as an opener.
pw 15y ago
And near the end he refers to her as "my delicious girlfriend." I think it's intentional, and he just threw it in for the fun of it (he is described as "irreverent"). But that sort of thing is out-of-character for the A Smart Bear blog, which means people just find it odd.
- Luc 15y ago
  I stopped subscribing to AppSumo emails because of this 'irreverent' style. It's straight out of the Sleazy Email Marketing handbook.
  - nhangen 15y ago
    I like AppSumo a lot, but lately it feels closer to Internet Marketer Sumo than App Sumo. I'm trying to take refuge from products like those, not get pitched on more of them.
    - noodle 15y ago
      i agree, but based on all the stuff i've read about the situation, they do all of this stuff because it works. it feels more internet marketer-ish because internet marketer-ish stuff is the stuff that converts better, and appsumo is a business, after all. convergent evolution.
      - nhangen 15y ago
        I'm not talking about their tactics as much as I am about the products they've featured lately. I don't read the emails or the landing page copy. I usually see which product is being offered, find their real product page, and read that. If it's something I want, then I buy it. Marketing is marketing, and I'll never begrudge a company for it, but copywriting techniques are just part of increasing conversions. The bigger part is knowing your audience.
        noodle 15y ago
        ah, that makes more sense. though, its tough to judge them on it yet. they decided to try out a different type of product to see how it works. if it doesn't work out for them, i'm sure they'll tone it down in the future.
larrywright 15y ago
Both mentions of his girlfriend in that article struck me as out of place.
jz 15y ago
The girlfriend mentions seemed irrelevant and out of place. I've noticed lately that more and more technical bloggers try to inject this fictional writing style to draw in readers. Most of the time it's so out of place that I immediately stop reading. My preference though is terse articles for technical discussions.
ctdonath 15y ago
He uses her as an illustration of how comfortable, unto bragging, his life is. She's flair, not a "for richer or poorer, sickness or health" commitment. The inappropriate implication of nocturnal habits implies a lack of subsequent dependents. I'll assume a due-every-month mortgage isn't involved either. This guy doesn't know what stress and depression is, yet I'm supposed to read his lecture on dealing with it? Stress is not knowing if you'll wake up after surgery and see your baby girl again. Depression is being on the wrong side of the >10% unemployment rate. This guy is suffering "micro-burn-out" because life is too good, he's bored of his hobby, and a half-dozen people said "no" two hours after a mass email blast.
- alnayyir 15y ago
  Thank you for reminding the yuppies.
- thaumaturgy 15y ago
  That's unnecessarily harsh. Anybody that puts a lot of effort into something only to have everyone else drop a big steaming deuce on it is going to be affected by it. His post was just about how he deals with that particular aspect of business. I see no reason to begin an armchair psychoanalysis of the guy or his life.
  - ctdonath 15y ago
    Such is the consequence of irreverence, which if not inspiring criticism isn't.
  - rhizome 15y ago
    Aren't you psychoanalyzing him yourself by somehow intuiting that he's putting "a lot of effort" into it? I don't really see that in the post itself.
    - thaumaturgy 15y ago
      From the fifth "paragraph": > It took 6 months to get that deal and we just emailed 70,000 AppSumo.com customers and 6 whole buys two hours after the email went out. The phrasing there implies that the effort required to arrange the deal wasn't trivial.
rhizome 15y ago
The whole tone of the post struck me as something like, "Hey, it's not like I'm just some stinky nerd." He's got a girlfriend, knows Mark Pincus, can afford a lifecoach...why shouldn't he be a business success? However, I didn't see any reflection on the fact that he's running a coupon site and whether that has something to do with his seemingly-persistent frustration. Whatever the root cause is, at the end of the day it's something that prevents him from noticing the typo on the AppSumo front page, so the level of detail of self-examination in the post seems to be somewhat opposed to the level applied to the mechanics of the business itself.
- ryanf 15y ago
  Two typos, actually. Wow.
- dennisgorelik 15y ago
  What typos? Are they fixed already?
  - rhizome 15y ago
    They are not fixed as of Tuesday morning 5/24/11.
    - dennisgorelik 15y ago
      "TODAYS" -> "TODAY'S"? What else?
JonnieCache 15y ago
It reminded me a lot of reading long posts on somethingawful as a teenager, which were ostensibly some interesting story but were in fact a thinly veiled way to say: "HAY GUYS I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND." Fortunately a mere superficial resemblance. This article has come at the right time for me, I have been feeling a little of this recently. I see other people talking about burnout and they've been in the game for decades ... I kinda felt guilty that I feel a bit like this only having been out of uni a couple of years, not doing anything particularly significant. It's good to know that there are other people out there feeling this way on a smaller scale as well. Often the best thing that comes out of these articles is not the actual advice, but simply the recognition that there are other people out there going through the same stuff. It's so natural to feel that one is alone and unique in ones emotions, however statistically unlikely this may be. It is the human condition to feel alone, but articles like this can head it off, at least for a while.

Was it really necessary to mention the fact that his girlfriend sleeps topless?

by luigi 15y ago

Was it really necessary to mention the fact that his girlfriend sleeps topless?

nhangen 15y ago

I thought that was strange as well, especially as an opener.

pw 15y ago

And near the end he refers to her as "my delicious girlfriend." I think it's intentional, and he just threw it in for the fun of it (he is described as "irreverent"). But that sort of thing is out-of-character for the A Smart Bear blog, which means people just find it odd.

Luc 15y ago
I stopped subscribing to AppSumo emails because of this 'irreverent' style. It's straight out of the Sleazy Email Marketing handbook.
- nhangen 15y ago
  I like AppSumo a lot, but lately it feels closer to Internet Marketer Sumo than App Sumo. I'm trying to take refuge from products like those, not get pitched on more of them.
  - noodle 15y ago
    i agree, but based on all the stuff i've read about the situation, they do all of this stuff because it works. it feels more internet marketer-ish because internet marketer-ish stuff is the stuff that converts better, and appsumo is a business, after all. convergent evolution.
    - nhangen 15y ago
      I'm not talking about their tactics as much as I am about the products they've featured lately. I don't read the emails or the landing page copy. I usually see which product is being offered, find their real product page, and read that. If it's something I want, then I buy it. Marketing is marketing, and I'll never begrudge a company for it, but copywriting techniques are just part of increasing conversions. The bigger part is knowing your audience.
      - noodle 15y ago
        ah, that makes more sense. though, its tough to judge them on it yet. they decided to try out a different type of product to see how it works. if it doesn't work out for them, i'm sure they'll tone it down in the future.

larrywright 15y ago

Both mentions of his girlfriend in that article struck me as out of place.

jz 15y ago

The girlfriend mentions seemed irrelevant and out of place. I've noticed lately that more and more technical bloggers try to inject this fictional writing style to draw in readers. Most of the time it's so out of place that I immediately stop reading. My preference though is terse articles for technical discussions.

ctdonath 15y ago

He uses her as an illustration of how comfortable, unto bragging, his life is. She's flair, not a "for richer or poorer, sickness or health" commitment. The inappropriate implication of nocturnal habits implies a lack of subsequent dependents. I'll assume a due-every-month mortgage isn't involved either. This guy doesn't know what stress and depression is, yet I'm supposed to read his lecture on dealing with it? Stress is not knowing if you'll wake up after surgery and see your baby girl again. Depression is being on the wrong side of the >10% unemployment rate. This guy is suffering "micro-burn-out" because life is too good, he's bored of his hobby, and a half-dozen people said "no" two hours after a mass email blast.

alnayyir 15y ago
Thank you for reminding the yuppies.
thaumaturgy 15y ago
That's unnecessarily harsh. Anybody that puts a lot of effort into something only to have everyone else drop a big steaming deuce on it is going to be affected by it. His post was just about how he deals with that particular aspect of business. I see no reason to begin an armchair psychoanalysis of the guy or his life.
- ctdonath 15y ago
  Such is the consequence of irreverence, which if not inspiring criticism isn't.
- rhizome 15y ago
  Aren't you psychoanalyzing him yourself by somehow intuiting that he's putting "a lot of effort" into it? I don't really see that in the post itself.
  - thaumaturgy 15y ago
    From the fifth "paragraph": > It took 6 months to get that deal and we just emailed 70,000 AppSumo.com customers and 6 whole buys two hours after the email went out. The phrasing there implies that the effort required to arrange the deal wasn't trivial.

rhizome 15y ago

The whole tone of the post struck me as something like, "Hey, it's not like I'm just some stinky nerd." He's got a girlfriend, knows Mark Pincus, can afford a lifecoach...why shouldn't he be a business success? However, I didn't see any reflection on the fact that he's running a coupon site and whether that has something to do with his seemingly-persistent frustration. Whatever the root cause is, at the end of the day it's something that prevents him from noticing the typo on the AppSumo front page, so the level of detail of self-examination in the post seems to be somewhat opposed to the level applied to the mechanics of the business itself.

ryanf 15y ago
Two typos, actually. Wow.
dennisgorelik 15y ago
What typos? Are they fixed already?
- rhizome 15y ago
  They are not fixed as of Tuesday morning 5/24/11.
  - dennisgorelik 15y ago
    "TODAYS" -> "TODAY'S"? What else?

JonnieCache 15y ago

It reminded me a lot of reading long posts on somethingawful as a teenager, which were ostensibly some interesting story but were in fact a thinly veiled way to say: "HAY GUYS I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND." Fortunately a mere superficial resemblance. This article has come at the right time for me, I have been feeling a little of this recently. I see other people talking about burnout and they've been in the game for decades ... I kinda felt guilty that I feel a bit like this only having been out of uni a couple of years, not doing anything particularly significant. It's good to know that there are other people out there feeling this way on a smaller scale as well. Often the best thing that comes out of these articles is not the actual advice, but simply the recognition that there are other people out there going through the same stuff. It's so natural to feel that one is alone and unique in ones emotions, however statistically unlikely this may be. It is the human condition to feel alone, but articles like this can head it off, at least for a while.