30/01/06
49A meme worth spreading: Just how long can you make your blog post title - is it like very long or is it like really really really really really really long like the long and winding road as sung about by Paul McCartney (he was one of the beatles you know)
I’ve given myself the weekend to simmer down, but I’m still furious at the pomposity of this and particularly this. You know how I said that one of my concerns for 2006, was that blogging amongst the design community was becoming too serious and worthy? Well there we go. I know that meme was EVERYWHERE, but deal with it. I actually found some of the answers quite interesting.
After all if you can’t arse around on your blog, where can you? C’mon!
Tags: memes
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John Oxton said 1072 days ago:
I’m with you, more messin’ less cussin’... I think.. yeah what he said
Scott said 1072 days ago:
...and now, the winner for longest title of a blog entry that’s not the title of a Smith/Morrissey song…
I’m sure the 37s crew mean well, but you are right on the money Jon.
Ryan Sims said 1072 days ago:
Amen.
Jeff Smith said 1072 days ago:
I second Mr. Sims’ sentiment.
Justin Perkins said 1072 days ago:
I second that emotion and have been pretty tired SvN blog of late. Nothing but a lot of butt slapping and hi-fives going on.
Stuart Frisby said 1072 days ago:
Trash the feed Jon, it’s the only way. I myself took a somewhat sarcastic attitude towards the whole meme thing, but hell, if you aren’t going to participate, why bother blogging it.
37s make some great web apps, but their blogs makes me angry, hence me removing it from my feedreader a while ago. They have a self congratulatory air which, thankfully, most of the really talented people in our industry lack.
John Nunemaker said 1072 days ago:
Amen. Wish I would have said it more publicly that I thought it was a bit dickish.
Andrew Hamann said 1072 days ago:
John should send them a pre release demo of his “Fuckyoucast”.
Mike D. said 1072 days ago:
Thank you for not linking to my own pompous semi serious anti meme post. :)
The Mike Industries Meme Disposal service is meant to let the meme die a peaceful death without the embarrassment of overcirculation and overexposure.
Jon Hicks said 1072 days ago:
Mike – yours was the right way to deal with it!
Sean S said 1072 days ago:
The difference, Mike, is that you poked fun at the meme while still remaining somewhat playful. The 37s post was, as John said, nothing but “pompous.” The followup post only proves they have no idea what a (successful) meme is, or why the blogosphere perpetuates them. Commencement address? Wtf?
Glen C. said 1072 days ago:
Twelved!
daniel said 1072 days ago:
“pomposity” is awesome.
the 37s guys need to get themselves livejournals. serious. i love the 37s products and i luuuuv lj. i think the two would go together like bananas and peanut butter.
Andy Budd said 1072 days ago:
SVN has been bugging me for a while so I trashed the feed a few months ago. I know we all pimp our own cool aid at times, and I have to admit that I’m a big fan of their apps, so it’s cool aid worth pimping. However the whole purpose of SVN seems to be for promotional reasons rather than for the love of blogging. Otherwise, they would have let the whole thing go quite for a bit when they hit a busy patch, rather than get a bunch of fans, oops sorry, guest bloggers, to take up the slack. I’ve always felt the tone of SVN was a little on the superior side and this “toys out of the pram” moment is a classic example.
John Allsopp said 1072 days ago:
Jon,
man, do I agree with you or what.
If you don’t like a meme, just ignore it. If no one else does either, it will go away. If it doesn’t, it is interesting.
And like you say – I like a spontaneous snapshot into people’s brains.
john
Jeremy Boles said 1072 days ago:
Good to see I’m not the only one frustrated with this type of stuff.
Paul said 1072 days ago:
Hell Yeah! You go Jon!
The four things meme seems to have quickly become the king of memes – it’s the first one I ever participated in, and the same for my friends too.
This meme like no other seems to have caught the imagination (no doubt helped by the fact that it was an easy one to do!) and I love that. What a way to start the year, an almost global Q+A. We all now know that little bit more about our favourite bloggers.
I did think that SvN post was a tad sad, I mean if you don’t like it then don’t join in, pretty simple solution if you ask me. Or choose to take the route Mike did, which I found to an intelligent way of dealing with this meme overload, and funny at the same time too!
I’m was actually starting to think SvN’s latest guest author was one Mr V. Meldrew! Moaning about memes, shoody printing, too many clicks…. if it wasn’t for wanting to know when their latest and greatest app hits the shelves, I’d probably ditch their feed too…!
Joshua Tuscan said 1072 days ago:
agreed.
Scott McMillin said 1072 days ago:
Totally with you, Jon.
The timbre of 37s’ blog has changed drastically since their star has risen in the last year or two upon having transformed from a design shop to developing web apps. I imagine the weight of their success has left them feeling they need to use their blog to espouse their business philosophy and project the right brand image.
I’ve always thought ML was like the younger brother who’s a little slow but tries really hard to please. I’ve been reading SvN since its inception and it’s always been ML’s posts that left me scratching my head. This one is right on for ML—he’s trying to show he has the depth, critical thinking, and leadership chops of JF, but he ends up just coming off like he’s trying too hard. I’ve always though ML should just stick to posting his music-themed entries (his area of ‘expertise’) and leave the design/business posts to JF.
eric said 1072 days ago:
When someone linked me to the 37s posts, I just about choked. I was tempted to reply in some snarky fashion, but I just unsubscribed from their feed instead.
I loved this one comment from “bryce” agreeing with them, though:
I guess he just unsubscribed from every reputable design blog but 37signals, then. People can certainly be toolboxes.
eric said 1072 days ago:
Also, Jon, I picked up some sort of textpattern invalid_tags error on comment submit, but it wound up going through regardless. Just FYI.
goodwitch said 1072 days ago:
Oh my…what a verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry looooooooooooooooooooooooooooog post title. Why, I do think it is absolutely the longest one I’ve ever experienced! ;-)
From the perspective of a southern girl who caught the blog bug less than one year ago (from you and your brilliant friends in fact)...you’ve always shown me that to truly blog is to speak from your heart.
And while I am the evil witch that passed a certain baton to you…I’ve already gained from your answer. I’ve put Elizabeth at the top of my Netflix queue and think we should have a double date in Boston this fall to see the leaves change!
Hugs,
G
Jakob Heuser said 1072 days ago:
Back in those dark pre-website days I called LiveJournal and Open Diary, we used to get hit by these a lot. We even had a great solution for those that didn’t want to participate in the meme(s), you just kept scrolling. Seemed to work well enough back then, clicking “Next Article” seems to be the modern RSS solution.
At least we aren’t plagued by Quizzilla style things anymore and have become self-sufficient meme propagators. There are only so many “what anime charaktor T you!11 w/PICS” one brain can handle.
Nathan Smith said 1072 days ago:
If anyone is curious about the meme – it started here.
Stephen said 1072 days ago:
I agree, Jon, way to go. I rather like a healthy meme every once in awhile and a lot of the responces were interesting.
Chris McElligott said 1072 days ago:
I’d enjoy the them even more if some of the lesser known bloggers like myself were able to participate :)
Shane said 1072 days ago:
Pretencious – moi?
I found the answers interesting too. I also agree with #26.
Fraser Speirs said 1072 days ago:
Wow. Pomposity on 37Signals? Who would have thought?!
;-)
Phil Sherry said 1072 days ago:
I think you’ll find it’s “McCartney”, not “Mcartney” ;)
Go and stand in the corner and think about what you have done.
Matt Lindop said 1072 days ago:
Couldn’t agree more: glad you took the opportunity to roast the hell out of everybody with your pomposity pistol
That post at SVN, along with their ‘Year in Review’ at Christmas (if you didn’t catch it, the gist was ‘not since Isaac Newton has there been so much spiffy innovation in one calendar year, and we think we’re jolly clever’), have made me look into the possibility of registering a new domain ...
Egor Kloos said 1072 days ago:
Yeah, well, taking blogs seriously and believing that they are fundamentally necessary for one intellectual growth is asking for trouble. SvN has it’s place, but never take their word as gospel. In fact never treat any ‘guru’ blog like that. Okay, I’m not sure what a ‘guru’ blog is but it looks like SvN think that they are ‘guru’ like. Personally I think they’re pretty guru like but they can dial it down a notch. In any case I can’t be arsed worrying about it. I’ll keep them in my ‘guru/genius/master/not entirely half baked’ RSS list because despite the rhetoric they’re not a bunch of monkeys either.—- end rant.
Nathan Pitman said 1072 days ago:
Totally agree, the comments on SVN narked me off a tad too, who do they think they are eh…
J.D. said 1072 days ago:
People need to realize it is all just for fun and lighten up. They don’t have to read it or participate in it if they don’t want.
Jason said 1072 days ago:
Meme killing is the new ”______ is the new black”.
Neil said 1072 days ago:
(goes over to SVN to see what the fuss is all about). Like their products, but yes, the attitude has got to go. If it were just relegated to their blog I wouldn’t care (don’t like == don’t read) but it extends into a lot of what they’re doing, too, including tech support.
Perfect example? I emailed them about poor performance on Basecamp’s to-do pages, and their response was (paraphrasing) “sorry, but that’s the way it works. Make shorter lists.” They then ended with a pithy quote that came off as extremely condescending.
There’s nothing wrong with having an ego, and nothing wrong with thinking that you might have a better way of doing things… but this kind of backlash is a long time coming and, frankly, more than a bit deserved.
Timothy Gray said 1071 days ago:
I admire the guys over at 37s for their work, but they’ve definitely bought their own hype.
Stephen Collins said 1071 days ago:
Look, we should sll just be thankful that a group like SvN is there to show us how we should be spending our time online. Now I know to stop wasting my time reading other peoples meme’s and can just rread theirs.
It’s getting very difficult to separate the signal from the noise over on that site.
Jan Korbel said 1071 days ago:
OK, with that first post Jason has taken it too far. But maybe he stood up from bed with wrong leg or something. I am sure everyone has a post he wish to delete looking back on it.
Aren’t you taking the scandalizing too far here?
Jon Hicks said 1071 days ago:
I think scandalizing is maybe too strong a word. This is just a call to lighten up.
Jared Christensen said 1071 days ago:
I’m a tad late to this party, and all I have to say is HEAR HEAR!
Will said 1071 days ago:
I love how seemingly when people on another site are all in agreement, they’re drinking the koolaid, but when people on YOUR favorite site all agree, they’re just right.
Remember, there are two sides to every story. For every daily reader of the design blogs who loves it when the memes make the rounds, there is another who wants to vomit.
It’s not that people don’t care about your four favorite whatevers, it’s just that nothing ruins a day like every usually interesting blog answering the same question. If you want to talk about something meme-ish, feel free to do so at your leisure; don’t wait around until you’ve been tagged to do so. Otherwise, don’t act so surprised when people complain about the stupidity of it all.
Jon Hicks said 1071 days ago:
The meme isn’t the issue here as far as I’m concerned, or even that someone is critical about them. Yes they’re annoying as hell, its the reaction that I’m responding to here. Mike Davidson showed how you criticise/put down a meme the right way, 37Signals showed how to do it the pompous way.
gb said 1071 days ago:
Imagine, if you will, if these people used something like myspace… they’d blow a gasket…
I’m all for a little friendly familiarization among bloggers, and seriously, how hard is it to just ignore someone’s meme blog entry if you don’t want to play along?
Jason Fried said 1071 days ago:
Not to go too off-topic here, but to those questioning our tech support, I’d like to refer you to this forum on the Basecamp site.
Jason Fried said 1071 days ago:
The URL went away… Here it is again:
http://basecamphq.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=411
Matt said 1071 days ago:
Hey all. Figured I’d at least show up at my own beatdown here. As often happens online, I think the tone of my original post was misconstrued. That’s my fault. If I wanted to criticize the spread of the 4 Things meme, I should have done so in a manner that was constructive or at least funny. The original post was neither so I understand why folks are reacting to it negatively.
I do think we need to keep things in perspective though. Let’s look at the terrible thing that I said in the orig post: “Memes that I hope will stop soon: This one.”
I still believe this. Does that mean I’m a pompous jerk? If so, I guess I’ll have to live with that. I’ve been bombarded by this Four Things stuff in my newsreader and I felt like the normally insightful, interesting commentary that I get from my favorite blogs had been replaced by one of those MySpace bulletin board surveys. If it was just a one-off thing, I’d click away and that would be that. But after seeing this thing replicated all over the place for days on end, I had the desire to speak out publicly. So I did.
A previous commenter on this thread said it well: “It’s not that people don’t care about your four favorite whatevers, it’s just that nothing ruins a day like every usually interesting blog answering the same question. If you want to talk about something meme-ish, feel free to do so at your leisure; don’t wait around until you’ve been tagged to do so. Otherwise, don’t act so surprised when people complain about the stupidity of it all.”
But I also understand there’s a bigger thing going on here too. The overall tone of 37s and our content seems to rub people the wrong way. Some people think we’re pompous, arrogant, know-it-alls. We know that. We made a decision a while back to go ahead and be provocative even if it angers or upsets some. We think it’s better to present ideas in bold strokes then to be wishy-washy about it. If that comes off as cocky or arrogant, so be it. We’d rather be provocative than water everything down with “it depends…” or some other qualifier. We think our readers are smart enough to figure out what’s going on.
Responses to other comments…
After all if you can’t arse around on your blog, where can you? C’mon!
You’re right Jon. You can do whatever you want on your blog and I support your right to do so. Hopefully you feel the same way about what I can or can’t say on my blog.
The followup post only proves they have no idea what a (successful) meme is, or why the blogosphere perpetuates them. Commencement address? Wtf?
The followup post was me trying to offer constructive criticism (I hate when people just complain w/o providing any alternative). I like commencement addresses and I believe they offer valuable content that deserves attention (in my opinion, the 4 things meme did not offer offer this). That said, I didn’t truly expect it to take off or anything.
If you don’t like a meme, just ignore it. If no one else does either, it will go away. If it doesn’t, it is interesting.
So if something spreads, it must be interesting? I’m not sure I agree with that logic. What’s popular and what’s interesting are often miles apart. Also, I wonder if the exclusive, insidery nature of the public “tagging” that came with these posts had something to do with the success of this meme. One commenter here said he would have enjoyed the meme more “if some of the lesser known bloggers like myself were able to participate.” Hmm.
I’ve always thought ML was like the younger brother who’s a little slow but tries really hard to please.
It’s true, I am slightly retarded. I’m also extremely ugly. Thanks for elevating the tone of the conversation. ; ) Now I understand the proper tone to take when discussing matters online.
SvN has it’s place, but never take their word as gospel.
We wholeheartedly agree. What we do works for us. We never say our way is gospel though. It always depends. It’s just boring to end every post with ”...but it depends.”
This is just a call to lighten up.
Duly noted! Thanks for the feedback everyone.
Jon Hicks said 1071 days ago:
“You’re right Jon. You can do whatever you want on your blog and I support your right to do so. Hopefully you feel the same way about what I can or can’t say on my blog.”
Of course! Its not so much a matter of saying ‘whatever you like’ – thats taken as read. Its that your post displayed an expectation that posts needed to be a of a certain quality/standard. My view is that blogs (of all things) shouldn’t have to meet criteria. The tone of your post was overly superior-than-thou, and as such, I took offense to it. I know that wasn’t your intention, and that you thought the follow up was constructive, but I felt it would have been better leaving it at that.
Like I said before, dealing with it using humour would’ve been better, and not left some of your readership feeling put down.
“It’s true, I am slightly retarded. I’m also extremely ugly. Thanks for elevating the tone of the conversation. ; )”
I think you’ve taken Scott’s comments a little too far here!
David Barrett said 1070 days ago:
“It’s true, I am slightly retarded. I’m also extremely ugly. Thanks for elevating the tone of the conversation. ; ) Now I understand the proper tone to take when discussing matters online.”
My ma could beat your da.
Matt said 1070 days ago:
“Its that your post displayed an expectation that posts needed to be a of a certain quality/standard.”
Yeah, I guess I do expect a certain quality/standard of posts from certain blogs. That’s why I read them. In fact, many of the bloggers that participated are ones I highly respect. That’s why I was so surprised by it all and felt it worthy of comment. But if my original post(s) came off sounding superior than I did a bad job communicating the point I was trying to make.