How is this different from the Bing/Microsoft kerfuffle?

I designed that poster, too, when I was bored last night. I downloaded the logo.gif from redcross.org and then pasted it onto a new photoshop doc.

@ROM - I hope W+K hires you RIGHT NOW.

@Super Chundy - I was thinking about that, too. It's totally standard to hold fundraisers for needy causes, whether it's selling candy to help a kid with cancer or posters for an entire country in disarray. Though you could cynically argue that people should donate money to every cause even if they don't get anything in return, these types of fundraisers incentivize giving among people who might not otherwise donate. What Bing did (and other companies do all the time) was turn that around and say, "Hey, you want us to help out? You have to give us something first: publicity." One reason I like this poster—especially compared to big corporate campaigns like (RED)— is it doesn't have any logo on it.

Bing = holding donations ransom

W+K = incentive for individuals to contribute

@smirk: that poster does in fact have a logo on it. A logo protected by an Act of Congress. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emblems_of_th…

http://xkcd.com/871/

I don't understand this thread. Is the argument that bing & w+k are both ultimately motivated by a desire for publicity, they're just going about it in different ways? Or that bing asking for retweets in exchange for donating is comparable to an individual asking for a poster in exchange for donating? (I ask b/c I agree w/Oregometry, the difference between incentivizing donations and "we will release the money if..." seems clear.)

My comment about W+K is that, while people will be grateful to you for helping them, they may not want you messing with their flag while doing it.

Mars, Inc. could sell special packages of red M&Ms with a cut of the proceeds going to Japanese disaster relief. I'm only mostly joking.

@AH Does it matter how or why the money was donated?

I suspect that the Red Cross and the victims in Japan don't care if Bill Gates held a gun to your head for a simple retweet. I'm really not into that whole Kantian if-the-donation-was-not-made-out-of-a-genuinely altruistic-motive-than-the-donation-is-not-valid dealy/argument.

But why don't we ask the people of Japan? People of Japan, should Bing keep its filthy, corporate, immoral, twitter money?

W+K and Bing are both companies organized around making profit, pure and simple. In both organizations, their donative actions were seen in the light of contributing to the support of a brand.

I still don't see why this is a big deal - companies have tried to induce sales by promising to donate portions of sale proceeds for years, and no one freaks out.

Now, Bing asks you to push a fucking button - to retweet one goddamn drop in a bucket of the usual useless Twitter bullshit, and everyone freaks the fuck out - ADVERTISING IN EXCHANGE FOR DONATIONS?

Is that the sound of a million monocles hitting the floor?

Bing agrees to pony up potentially $100K for Japan (never saying that's Microsoft's total and final contribution, mind you), and all you have to do is push a fucking button to RT.

If you decline to push that button because you're too cool or "credible" to be Bing's shill for a single immediately-forgotten nanosecond, thereby denying a buck to disaster relief, who's really being the dickhead?

How dare you Colin?! Sarah was way too busy telling people about pi themed bike rides. She doesn't have time to RT Bing's b/s!

http://twitter.com/sarahmirk/status/473892…

@Süpêr Chuñdy: Retain your impure Bingu money. We don't desirious of gaijins which pollutes our beautiful countries. We depend on Godzilla and Akira which reconstruct our magnificent ancestral palaces.

Is this one of those "my 6-year-old can do that" pieces?

@Graham, maybe I'm missing something, but the link you posted is for Red Cross, that poster has a white cross. Maybe if you linked to the flag of Japan it might have been relevant.

Hey, stop straw manning me, Chundy. (Yeah, I took debate.*) I don't think bing should keep their money—I was trying to sort out the argument, because I definitely fell into the "ick, bing" category when I saw that tweet going around. So: w+k gets plaudits for designing a (sorry, unremarkable) poster and forwarding the proceeds. Microsoft gets criticism for donating 100k. On paper, that's fucked up. I think the bing backlash stems from the insult of being marketed to in an unsophisticated manner - being asked to shill so openly to the people in one's social network. (Or maybe it's some next level transparency in marketing shit but... I don't think so.) It also reinforces the lazy twitter-activist stereotype a little too directly for comfort. Which are not great reasons for not participating—that all says more about our relationship to marketing than anything else. I didn't retweet it, but I'm donating to Mercy Corps today; I guess I'll make it $51.

*no I didn't.

Suuuper creative.

@Ritchie @Graham: I forgot to mention that in my photoshopping last night I pressed ctrl+i and totally inverted the Red Cross logo so that the cross is white and the background is red. Guessing this W+K designer did the same.

I wasn't strawmanning you, I was ridiculing you.

So you don't think Bing should keep their money, you just want to make sure that their money is separated from the donations NOT made by coercion, lame marketing, lazy twitter activism, or anything but pure motivations. (yeah, yeah, another straw man.)

There too much "outrage" on the Internet(s) these days and the Bing thing and W+K poster are trivial things to get /this/ worked up over.

If Bing gets some free pub for it twittivism (or is that twerrorism?) so be it. It all is helping people.*




*For every comment on this tread Alison will donate $1 (up to $10,000,000)!

@ROM, I'm guessing the W+K designer put a white cross in the middle of the flag of Japan, cause a red one wouldn't show up very well.

Chundy says this is too trivial to get worked up over....in his/her fourth comment on this thread.

What if at our next Blogtown meetup we had a strawman pinata.

Japan has merged with Switzerland. Philip K. Dick predicted this, didn't he?

@ Alison, I think the idea of a "next Blogtown meetup" is itself a straw man - it's been quite a while, hasn't it?

Or is that straw man a red herring holding a false flag?

Blogtown meeting. Right now. At the bar I'm walking out the door to go to.

(I didn't want to mention this until the thread was deserted, Sarah, but if there were infinite money it would be infinitely devalued. Could be a problem. You should perhaps substitute "an enormous amount of money approaching but not reaching infinity" next time.)

The thread is NOT deserted. re: meetup: Our logistical capabilities are currently overwhelmed w/the impending office move, but if you guys want to plan something independently I will certainly promote it. One possibility: We will be having a Mercury yard sale some time in April to get rid of the ridiculous amount of junk we've accumulated during our years in this building. Our yard is next door to Club 21. That might be a good time?