What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Sometimes, bad ideas need to be pointed out.

I am the first to stare when companies -- especially tech companies -- are caught publicly masturbating.

PR and Tech seem to have one of those long-term, romantic comedy film-like relationships. PR keeps telling Tech how wonderful it is and Tech just keeps believing it and then they go off on goofy shenanigans only to fall into each others arm come the night.

One of the first rules of PR is to "not believe your own bullshit." It's necessary to have a critical eye and to differentiate between boasts of "world-class game changers" and actual, fact-based journalism. Technology writing (I will not call it journalism) has this slightly insecure feel about it, seeing as it's been around in its current form for less than two decades. So, like any good PR whore, it resorts to elaborate schemes to garner serious attention that is otherwise undue.

Which is why I like ValleyWag so much.

In today's must-read post, they quote icky-geeky kinda-author/VC/schill MG Siegler as saying:

O, Shit. UPDATE!

Not very smart at all.

Looks like questionable start-up RapGenius.com just went tits up.

Seems they tried to make that whole "First Page of Google" fantasy come true by simply bribing people to link to them. The only problem is: that is verboten in the Google Universe.

PR. O, Lord. PR.

“Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.”
― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

Thanks to Gawker, we've learned of a new high bar for PR scum. Evidently, Sarah Lockard blogger on "CEO" of AroundMainLine.com has pretty much declared that she is a PR whore and has no problem with that.

PR whore blogger, CEO, beggar Sarah Lockard

In exchange for feeding her family on Christmas Eve for free, she will actually write a blog post that 560 people will see. Damn.

I kind of admire her brazen self-promotion. It's a question, though, of who is really getting the PR value. Public Relations as a concept is pretty shaky on any normal day. Throw open the faucet on bloggers who have no concept of best practices and it goes to hell pretty damn quickly.