« BoingBoing browser stats | Main | Remote MAX »
October 16, 2006
Who's more credulous?
Who's more credulous? Something's been bothering me about this weekend's Edelman/WalMart issue. The stated concern was that RV owners and WalMart shoppers who lacked a sufficiently developed sense of irony would be mind-raped by a PR corporation which made a fake blog of apparently spontaneous feelgood stories. I have no idea of what's going on at the Edelman PR firm, why they 404'd the cached stories, or why other Edelman staffers didn't acknowledge the controversy until Monday -- I suspect it was just the normal slowness of business communications between distant staffers in the same company, then checking with the WalMart For Working Familes group -- I still don't know why Edelman bloggers didn't just acknowledge what they didn't know. But the big blogging story of "covert mind-rapers" falls apart when investigation reveals that the blog did indeed disclose the WalMart sponsorship... there was even a press release about their sponsorship at the blog's launch! Yet if you check that top TechMeme link, there's tons of bloggers still telling each other about "undisclosed fake bloggers hired". We were worried about unsophisticated RV owners being manipulated. We were worried that The Other would not be smart enough to question his programming. And yet, the story on TechMeme tonight is still about "evil deceiving nondisclosure", just based on word-of-mouth. Maybe we're all lacking in sufficient skepticism, and follow along with the crowd too easily, eh...? :(
Posted by JohnDowdell at October 16, 2006 08:55 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mtadmin/mt-tb.cgi/7906
Comments
Dude! Your URL appears to be from another company and yet you claim to work for adobe systems (http://weblogs.macromedia.com/) yer a deceiver fess up! ;-)
[jd sez: I am indeed flawed, just one poor sinner cast adrift in this world of sorrows.... ;-) ]
Posted by: george girton at October 17, 2006 09:27 AM
So, just because it was only *attempted* mind-rape, they get a free pass?
For that matter, the identities of the anonymous Edelman employees who post on paidcritics.com and forwalmart.com haven't been disclosed yet either.
Posted by: michael bernstein at October 19, 2006 07:15 PM
Hah! I should have read more closely! They *did* manage to mind-rape you into thinking that forwalmart.com (aka 'WalMart For Working Familes') was an actual grassroots group! [jd sez: No, the company's affiliation was quite obvious.]
Nothing could be further from the truth. It's also just an Edelman-run PR site. [jd sez: Which they have the perfect right to run, even had you demonstrated that they controlled the content.]
Posted by: michael bernstein at October 19, 2006 07:18 PM