Ask Meh Anything
9You might have questions, so we’ve got answers…eventually. Instead of sitting and waiting anxiously for your 'omg best question ever!!' to be answered in overrated real time, we’re doing it the meh way: slowly and painfully. Ask @snapster and @dave your best questions, or if you’re smart let someone else do all the hard work for you because they'll probably come up with something better than you ever could.
Star the questions that you want answered the most and I’ll present the top 10-ish in carved granite slab form to Matt & Dave to be answered at some point between now and when the sun explodes in a few billion years.
If your questions are good and interesting enough they might even get answered if they don't have stars, but don't hold your breath (unless you're underwater or something).
- 36 comments, 85 replies
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WTF?
@dave?
Does clicking meh disqualify you from purchasing that item?
I'll field this one right now - no. You can have your meh and buy it too!
Nope. I was able to buy a meh item successfully, even after exclaiming my indifference.
@snapster So how was the breakfast octopus?
Sadly I cannot remember exactly what I had. I only remember picking something simple that I wouldn't have to slurp at.
in the sense of the idiom, it was not bad being the breakfast octopus. I'd have preferred a more collaborative analogy than being eaten.
@snapster Follow up question: did he at least indicate that you were delicious or did you upset his delicate stomach?
I didn't wait around to see how the breakfast was stomached. I was afraid it might be explosive.
@snapster Hahahahaha! So. Wrong. smh.
So what's the secret handshake to get into Mediocre Laboratories?
@dave and I actually worked this out yesterday. I have a follow up question on it but will wait for him to share.
Well, the secret meh handshake: fist bumps, with thumb extended to the side (neither thumbs up or thumbs down).
Time for a super awesome video of the two of you showing us the handshake
@snapster What's the play here? Without ads, emails, only one item (all the things we love and respect), where is the money to be made? Or, is this just a pet project? Will we be disappointed again when rules change and new overlords come in? WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL OF THIS?!?
Hopefully any (very unlikely) accumulated stars will not be divided against the total number of questions posed.
@marklog i'm happy just watching where this thing goes. should be fun to watch for a very long time.
the 300x250 on the front page will be more ad-like in the future. I honestly just think emails were a long term detriment.
the other 'play' here is we have more elbow room to experiment without a central brand (or well, it's mediocre & hopefully not intrusive)
Here's our one weird trick: We sell you things for more than we paid for them.
There are ads, at least on the mobile version of meh.com.
@dave e-commercers HATE HIM!
I'm really curious where the meh button is headed--is it supposed to mean the traditional meaning of meh, meaning, well, the item for sale is meh? Or is it more like I meh'd the item because I liked it?
It's fine to think traditional. We're not out to rehabilitate Meh the word. We enjoy it fully as is.
@dave What's the worst part about having Matt as a brother?
@shawn feature request: ability to remove votes!
It's becoming increasingly unlikely I'm ever going to rank first on Google for Rutledge.
@snapster If you could run your fingers through the hair of any person, whose hair would it be?
OMG, I can't remember her name. Brave woman???
yes indeed. Brave Woman. they didn't document memes back in our day and age :)
Over 4,200 viewers, with roughly 1,400 KS backers. Do I smell shenanigans? Or do I just smell what The Rock is cooking?
this won't be a top Q. but is easy: The viewer metric includes people arriving at the password screen. For today we didn't bother fixing.
Do any Meh employees own pants? Or are they leased?
I would love to lease pants. Or how about NetPants? Maybe yuck?
ZipPants is almost too perfect...
Like Nest for Pants.
Call it Hot Pants and give it a whole new level of something.
Pants are just one of the many benefits afforded Meh employees
"Mehmployee"
How much do you regret hiring @jont?
@dave's clearly to blame here.
What important things did you learn from Woot that make Mediocre Laboratories different?
one stated earlier is: don't get boxed in such that every direction dilutes the core premise.
Are you my dad?
talk show host required
Strangely posed the same question on twitter earlier, are you our dad, dad?
When is the officially planned time for new Meh! sales?
My thought-- 1) make it earlier than the "other" site so I can spend my meh! bucks here first.
2) I've always felt bad for east coast folks having to stay up until 1 am, so make it earlier for their sake too.
3) Of course, noon east coast time (sort of like today) was kind of meh too. Might make it easier to reboot all the servers at that time once the fuku-whatever's go on sale.
I'm meh with whenever it is, but when is the time?
oh, yes please! at least one minute earlier. that's how you start a rivalry. Well, also the not-so-veiled references to the olden days
They've said it will be midnight Eastern Daylight Time (1 hour earlier than those other guys)
Where does the username Snapster come from?
I'll have to use a couple of these reply boxes. In 1991 I moved from technician to sales at a computer parts wholesaler...
I had no accounts handed to me, so I had a particularly aggressive ability to answer "open sales calls" coming into the sales floor.
When I picked up the phone, I would blurt out "thisismatt" in such a fashion and in combination with snatching up the phone that my fellow
salesreps would announce my answering the call by exclaiming "snnaaap!" 2 years later I opened my own wholesale parts distributor.
It was called Synapse Micro. (say it fast and you get the inside joke)
Synapse incubated Woot. Years before I'd taken to using Snapster on World of Warcraft or Ultima Online, I forget. So it was obvious choice.
Is it your plan for VMP access to be a limited time thing? Like, you'll offer the ability to buy a membership for the first six months or something, but after that, people who didn't get it early will not be able to buy it. IF that is the plan, will you allow VMP members who had to cancel for some reason buy it again later, or is it one of those deals where if we want to be able to be VMP forever, we have to be VMPs continuously?
There are no plans to cancel it and grandfather people in, but we also have to see how it plays out over time.
@snapster, that makes sense. I understand that you don't want to commit to keeping it around this early, just glad to know there aren't...
current plans to end it on X date or something.
Why do birds suddenly appear
every time
you are near?
If the birds are vultures and buzzards I doubt we need this answered.
How about being a 24-deal-a-day site, with one sale starting at noon in each time zone, so no one feels left out?
everyone is free to start a deal site. we want to enjoy this classic pace. Ideally we can keep the bar high enough to entertain us all.
And low enough that we all feel comfortable to be our pantsless selves.
I feel like people are missing an opportunity here. Instead of asking questions about the current/future operation of the site, ask something important like: If you dripped a small amount of gravy into the hair of a small child while waiting in the buffet line, what would you do?
why am I waiting? I would loudly announce "Let it be known all in front of me shall get gravy in their hair" to clear the rest of the line.
Do you plan on showing piano cat when your servers crash on a day you might be giving away a random pile of meh?
I'm thinking it will be Bacon Pancakes.
Um, I think you mean "keyboard cat". WTF is "piano cat"?!
AH-HA...I was just making sure you guys were paying attention. NOPE, THAT'S WHAT I WAS DOING! (slips into the shadows)
I always thought it was piano feline.
I'm a big fan of the zither zebra myself.
I'm curious about the logic behind the Kickstarter launch for meh.com. Why did you choose that route rather than just launching meh.com and spreading word through the mediocre forums, twitter, and other methods you're already using? Was Kickstarter just for marketing? It seems like you could have saved yourself the fee that Kickstarter charges.
Please don't take the above as criticism. I'm truly interested in your thought process. It might come in handy when I try to take over the world. :)
I want to "star" this quesion multiple times. It's something I'd like to know as well.
Many of us are kickstarter fans. The opportunity arose to be the first ever ecommerce site featured on kickstarter.
Ended up we didn't make use of that at all (I mean it's also sort of lame) but our choice was tied to a very recent KS rule simplification.
Can Meh.com predict the future? Did you already know that I was going to ask that?
Yes. Statistically the future will revert to the mean, which is to say that it is average e.g. Meh is the future. ©July 7th, 2014 meh.com
holy shit! I want that logo next to my name! I love it
Will the official birthday for Meh be July 8th or July 9th? And do you think mid-July is the best time to launch deal-a-day websites (Woot is July 11th)?
Woot is July 12th. They are celebrating early so they don't have to work Saturday.
Depends on if you have a little Kickstarter badge next to your name or not
How do you pronounce fukubukuro?
What is that smell?
Bacon Pancakes. Pay Attention.
Will there be more shirts?
What happens to mediocre.com (in particular the forums) now that meh.com is on the scene?
Probably becomes a less active, more meta version of itself where we talk about future ecommerce experiments (once meh.com is stable).
It's like the company break room, but open to the public.
Can someone put on a new pot of coffee in there?
bu t I have that one bookmarked. this is very inconvenient , as is the lg purring cat now on my arm so i can only use oft hand LITTLe .
Why was the ability to see who had voted on things disabled? I rather liked that feature -- no way to hide behind your vote. Wear it with pride (or don't vote for it).
They'll flip it back on after people get too comfortable and shame us all.
Is there any person or topic you are already sick of seeing in the forums?
How many comments do you think we'll have after one year that are just "meh."?
kinda brought it on yourself, really...
If you could walk up to one world leader and mumble "meh." under your breath who would it be?
Are you going to offer additional payment methods? Like paypal, amazon, bitcoin, magic beans...
Also is it cheeky to vote for your own question/comment? Similar to liking your own fb posts?
It's not nearly as lame as liking your own FB posts, because you have to be lame to be on FB in the first place
It is similar to high fiving yourself.
I'm curious to know if you've found anything more difficult this time around? I imagine lots is easier - you have merch contacts now, you've worked some kinks out, you've got (I presume) far more capital etc.
So has anything been harder? Anything surprised you?
I like this question. @snapster @dave
By the time I left Woot I was doing a very different job than when I started.
Managing a few dozen people, meeting with several levels of other managers.
So coming back here and actually digging into Photoshop and HTML and writing content directly was a bit of a shock at first.
Similarly, doing things without metrics, just because it felt good, or right, or even just funny, I had to beat back years of "training."
I want a job at Meh. Who do I bribe to get paid a crap-ton of money, receive awesome benefits and get unlimited access to all the outdated stuff in the warehouse?
What's the best way to get rid of tonsil stones?
@medz gargle with salt water
@JonT it's my understanding that gargling generally doesn't dislodge them.
@medz
How much meh could a meh Irk meh, if it bothered a meh Irk more than it should?
im so glad this thread got bumped. I missed all of the replies somehow! I dislike not being able to sort by unread.