You said the fact that it was a marketing ploy made the paper look like complete suckers and idiots. My point is they probaby had a fair idea what was going on but it’s just not in their interests to say so. And the SMH’s article was quite clear that it was possible that it was a hoax.
This.
And I would add that it doesn’t count as stalking if you are openly searching for someone. Stalking is following or observing someone that you already know where they are (or who left to get away from you) and either in secret or purposefully to freak them out. None of these things apply here.
As far as the double standard, I would say that applies not to gender or beauty, but to compatibility. An ugly man looking for an ugly woman wouldn’t get as many people up in arms.
I thought of doing something similar many years ago. In college there were two men I knew, one in person and one online and I lost touch with both of them. Inability to know what happened to them make the situation seem more romantic, and I thought about posting an email or webpage asking people to help me find them (no youtube at the time). I never did, though I did manage to track down one of the fellows despite the fact that he moved to another continent! I didn’t pursue anything more than merely catching up by email, but the closure was nice.
As for the other fellow, all I have is what their screename was on the MUSH we flirted with each other on, and a university email address for somewhere in Oklahoma, which doesn’t work, and which isn’t the sort of email that consists of parts of the real name of a person lol. Maybe I should have done something before it became a cliché.
Don’t you think that makes it, if possible, even worse?
“Here you go folks. Here’s a crappy little human interest story, one with absolutely no redeeming value as news. And it could be just a hoax by some self-promoting bimbo or fatuous marketing wanker. Please enjoy.”
We’re talking past one another. My point has only ever been that the media aren’t necessarily suckers, and that they probably have a good idea what’s going on. I wasn’t trying to suggest for a moment that what they do is laudable.
The point I’m having trouble with is working out why they’re getting conned into these things (knowingly or otherwise) when there’s no money in it for them.
I mean, if someone wanted to sell that jacked by taking out an ad in the paper, it would cost them a reasonable sum of money to place the ad. Yet by thinly disguising it as a “Human interest” story, the company is getting a free ad in the paper and the newspaper is losing out on a not insignificant amount of revenue.
To me, as a reader, the paper either comes across as gullible (and therefore unreliable) or that they’re actively involved in it, which is even worse, IMHO.
In short, I’m not going to buy the advertisers product, and I have less faith in the paper that reported the story. Nobody wins there.
It’s a damn entertaining story. Whether it was bullshit has nothing to do with it. It was a major element of the news cycle on Sunday and Monday. It got Farked (which alone means thousands upon thousands of additional hits). It got picked up by other papers with links back to the orginal story. We’re still talking about. It drew truckloads of traffic to websites and presumably sold papers. It was on TV and drew ratings.
Advertising rates depend on viewer/reader/hitcount numbers.
FWIW, this thread was the first I’d heard of it, so evidently I’m not their target for this sort of thing. 
Me neither.
But you (and I) still ended up hearing about it and watching the video, one way or another.
I think she looks like Claire Danes.
Yes, but I don’t know the name of the brand of jacket they were promoting, so I guess it failed on me.
That’s what I was thinking. I wouldn’t know the jacket from a bar of soap, and even if I did I doubt I’d connect it with this thing, so as far as ad campaigns go I’d say it’s been a bit pointless, really
Assuming that one can extrapolate from you and I, which I think is highly dubious. “Fashion” is something other people care about as far as I’m concerned. But Og knows some people care about it a lot and they would have taken notice of the name of the jacket. I think I did see the name somewhere, but it went in my eyes and out my ears without stopping.
Clever campaign. I’m not sure how much longer this sort of viral marketing will work, though. Eventually (already?) people will fail to see the cleverness and get pissed off at the advertisers for tricking them.