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Cards Against Humanity’s “$5 More” Black Friday Sale
- hanief 13y agodavid and goliath by gladwell is indeed a good motivational/justificational book for underdog or lean startup aiming at big corporate.
- booruguru 13y agoWhy is he being voted down? The book is referenced in the article.
- wmeredith 13y agoI can't speak for anyone else, but I auto-downvote comments that lack proper punctuation/grammar. It's a fast indicator of quality discourse.
- dllthomas 13y agoI do not downvote for poor punctuation and grammar, but it does bias me in that direction a bit.
- alphakappa 13y agoDownvoting for bad grammar? What if this person is a non-native english speaker? I know plenty of smart people who grew up with a different primary language, and can make bad mistakes in english while writing.
- wmeredith 13y agoThen that's just too bad, I guess. HN is an English speaking site. The ability to articulate your thoughts in the medium chosen for the discourse is cost of entry. Poor grammar is a quick indicator of content quality to me. In fact, it's just about the only thing I will downvote. Maybe it's because I was raised by an English professor. Edited: Typo (of course)
- SheepSlapper 13y ago"en English professor" Sorry buddy, gotta downvote you now. Based on that typo I can tell that this comment lacks quality and doesn't add to the discourse.
- dllthomas 13y agoPoor grammar and spelling lowers the signal-to-noise ratio. Upvotes and downvotes are quite specifically designed to raise the signal-to-noise ratio on the site. It doesn't have to reflect on the person as an individual. Having said that, I don't downvote on grammar/spelling alone (as I mentioned elsewhere), and I do cut a little more slack when a person is not a native speaker (but not 100% slack - better grammar and spelling are always preferred, other things being equal).
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- nollidge 13y agoI auto-downvote comments that pay attention to poor proxies for quality discourse rather than just evaluating the quality of the discourse itself.
- dllthomas 13y agoGrammar is a component of quality discourse, though I agree the parent overweights it.
- pasquinelli 13y ago"auto-downvote" explain to me how it isn't stupid to auto-downvote, for any reason.
- Nicholas_C 13y agoThere's been a pretty negative Gladwell vibe on HN lately.
- jbrooksuk 13y agoI bought the UK version one day before Black Friday. Well worth the full price as it's kept me amused every day since!
- cup 13y agoI wonder if the controversy surrounding their dickwolves criticsm and potential hypocrisy has damaged their branding. I doubt it but it would be interesting to see the numbers.
- DanTheManPR 13y agoThat's Penny Arcade you're thinking of.
- cup 13y agoIm actually referencing this incident I read about on reddit: http://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qjg3s/we_make_the_game_cards_against_humanity_ask_us/cddddm1 http://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qjg3s/we_make_the_game...
- chrismonsanto 13y agoI knew what you were talking about (although, to be fair, the poster you linked is a friend of mine) Their response: http://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qjg3s/we_make_the_game_cards_against_humanity_ask_us/cdde3rl http://np.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1qjg3s/we_make_the_game...
- hobs 13y agoThanks for the information, I had no idea there was such pointless hypocrisy going on. The game is still fun, but their response seems nonsensical to me. The distinction is lost on me.
- lazerwalker 13y agoIt strikes me as a bit sensationalist to call that an "incident". Someone asked a question, they responded civilly. The discussion turned slightly inflammatory amongst other Redditors (i.e. not the actual CAH guys), as isn't completely unexpected on Reddit when you're discussing an even vaguely touchy subject.
- monksy 13y agoAlso, you should take in account that when that happened Max also tried use his twitter following to embarrass the people who disagree with. Thats a pretty crappy thing to do in his position. https://twitter.com/MaxTemkin/status/401226933779701760 https://twitter.com/MaxTemkin/status/401226933779701760 I don't care about his politics and opinions, I like the game at how it originally was created: something incredibly horrible and vain. EDIT: Don't like a card and own the deck? Throw out the offending cards. Don't like the card you hold? Ask the group what you have to do to get rid of a card/don't play it.
- contextual 13y agoI ran a similar experiment with Rejection Therapy a year or so ago. I used big red "DON'T BUY" purchase buttons and sales went up slightly. Long story as to why I took them down, and I'm not even sure if I should discuss it so I won't.
- applecore 13y agoWhy did you take them down? :)
- contextual 13y agoIt's a bizarre and complicated story I hope to one day tell, but not today.
- interstitial 13y agoCurses to you. I want to know, today. You think the internet has conditioned me to be patient? No! I want it now.
- im3w1l 13y agoYou're good.
- kevingadd 13y agoThe CAH crew has a history of running cute little business experiments like this. One I remember from earlier this year: https://twitter.com/wesleyverhoeve/status/381151177494130689/photo/1 https://twitter.com/wesleyverhoeve/status/381151177494130689...
- monksy 13y agoJust as a historical note: Max also complained that they didn't get much money out of PAX (where they did this) compared to the amount of money they spent. [They made their booth VERY elaborate]
- PaulJoslin 13y agoI think this is an important lesson in marketing and getting press attention that other start ups or entrepreneurs should take note of. The key to getting press / marketing attention / viral affect is to do something different that gets people talking. On black Friday everyone is cutting their prices. If you put out a press release saying you were cutting your prices too it is unlikely to even register on the press' radar. However, do something so different and disruptive that it becomes a unique and funny story and it warrants press attention and share-ability. Quite often I notice people on HN reading every post about 'Simple guide to marketing your app' or other people's success stories, thinking 'If I follow these steps they used to promote their app, I'll have the same success' - however the opposite is true, if you do what they did you're less likely to have the same impact they originally had. This applies to anything from the original idea of sending personalised emails to the blogosphere regarding your new app, to the original milliondollarhomepage.com. TL;DR; - Be different, disrupt the expected and gain press by not following the crowd.
- nollidge 13y agoThis is basically useless advice. If you're too different people will think it's weird, or just being different for different's sake, and they'll still pass you up. The real key is to be original. Except that's also useless advice, because it's only ever obvious in hindsight.
- Nicholas_C 13y ago>because it's only ever obvious in hindsight. Seriously. We can do case studies until the cows come home and attempt to market products in ingenious ways and still never get noticed. While a different company that does something as a mere joke will get heaps more exposure without even trying. I don't work in marketing, but this must be frustrating.
- sgarman 13y agoI think the real key here is have a product people want. After that you have a lot more room to take chances in marketing without it blowing up. They even conclude that they don't believe people even cared when purchasing from amazon that day.
- OneOneOneOne 13y agoI think CAH understands their customer quite well. Others applying this direct approach could be perceived as dicks.
- interstitial 13y agodickwolves.
- xiaoma 13y agoInteresting to contrast this with Cards for Humanity, which links the same offensive cards with the goal of donations to charity. http://cfh.io http://cfh.io