@snapster Except you’re looking more like the junior version of the new Woot instead of the old Woot. The quirky little tweaks are vanishing, the self-deprecating and sketchy-product-disparaging remarks have gotten rarer and a lot less edgy, the damnstupid 99-cent fecking price thing has wormed its way in…
I half expect you to stop asking “Who’s buying this crap?” any day now.
All of that. And you can see how it has taken the fun out of the picture. For one thing, the forums have gotten a lot less active without the various levels of enthusiasm/loathing, particularly over IRKs scored or missed. Even the snake oil items have become … banal.
I wish I had a solid suggestion about how to restore it to what it was, but some of the evolution has happened because of things you can’t fix. Nobody even makes a solar-powered-knife-sharpener-speaker-dock now. What’s a desperately jaded buyer supposed to do, when the Chinese product fairs have pretty much shut down because of the plague, and nobody’s actually making much of anything useful elsewhere?
@werehatrack I’ve come to appreciate pitch-forks out as a sign of passion that so many communities never get to experience, so pardon me if I have nostalgia for it in a perverse way.
Another enjoyment is that as a company we have repositioned ourselves the past few months (staff and budget) to focus more on Meh. So it’s an ideal time to hear our problems freshly presented.
@snapster I’d say “Old Meh” was before the pandemic. I think that event changed expectations and attitudes even more than is realized, even in the merchandising field.
People are both spending like drunk sailors (“live for today”) and economizing like refugees (“save for the next rainy day”), depending on their means. Some people have split personalities and do both. https://www.marketplace.org/2022/09/30/the-economy-is-acting-weird-not-even-economists-can-fully-say-why/
[Also see the post by @boredashell immediately below and mine much further down.]
@snapster@werehatrack Also, too, there’s something that happened, starting a couple of years ago, that I saw manifested in my “sudden” inability to ever, ever again score an IRK, even though my connectivity and pingback speed here has more than doubled. I don’t know exactly why, but it felt like bots had written scripts to scoop all of them up in a couple of ms, or something. And while IRKs are just a game, feeling like you can’t even compete on a level field is kind of disheartening. It just kind of put a damper on my enthusiasm for hanging around as much. And the less I participate, the lower the feedback loop, so I then participate even less.
I guess I’m saying that 3-4 years ago, it felt “fun” to come to Meh, and hang out for a while. It doesn’t really seem that much fun, anymore. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
@snapster@werehatrack
I’m wondering if the FOMO factor plays a role in this. When it was just meh, folks knew that if one didn’t purchase the item that day, it might not come back. With other Mercatalyst outlets, however, it’s pretty much expected that an item would be subsequently available again, which lowers the impulse to buy right away.
So people who were like “I get one every time it’s super easy” mmm no it wasnt. It was supposed to be rare and it allways felt like you could not compete for most people. At least to me. So. If that’s your complaint… Meh.
I still check meh for the cats and the stories and just in case there is a good deal. I obviously would like to see more good deals that I would want to buy though, but. Meh.
Obviously I miss matt and some of the earlier weirdness
I feel. Life hit hard these last years and my wife and I had a baby right in the middle of it. Meh hasn’t been a priority at all to me like it used to and I’m finding it hard for me to reignite that spark it once gave me after having found a rhythm and starting to get back into some sort of normalcy. I have been apart of this since 2015 maybe 16, can’t remember, but even with me trying to remind myself daily to at least click the button everyday I still have little to no interest. I don’t know how I could but I would definitely try and help bring some magic back into meh if I could. Maybe I’ll win the lottery
@boredashell I think the poops are funny but I get that not everyone does. If you would like it removed please contact support and they can help you out with that.
@Ignorant Definitely shocked me but it’s my badge i have earned. I can see it growing in me. A cat would be a cool badge though. I would totally trade poop for cat if they existed
@boredashell@Ignorant lol I was poop for a long time and will probably be again shortly. I needed some shorts and there were gnats so the swatters/bug zappers we’re… Extremely satisfying but it was the first time in a long time
@boredashell@Ignorant I don’t buy much either. Or check in every day. I mean. I have it in my list of daily websites I check in a row with some comics, then move on. I don’t always check the forums Some nights/weekends I’m able to drop into the forums and get a good laugh/make some comments/check the goat thread.
I gave up on irks a LONG time ago. And why it’s so easy for some. Probably my abysmal upload spead. The community is good. If they sell something I want great if they don’t. Meh
@Ignorant hmm I am back to poop lol. Guess I already did cancel. I mean the model is if you buy one thing you sign up, then if you buy anything else free shipping, if you don’t cancel. So…
I wasVMP for a few years I think but. Meh just stopped selling things I wanted often enough. Which. Was fine as long as someone wants it
@Ignorant@Star2236@werehatrack someone got DEEPLY offended at the whole thing when it was implemented. And had like a rage quit. I want too say unixrab but he was so anti vmp I can’t remember if he ever got suckered into it. Site:meh.com is not turning it up.
@carl669@mike808 I officially miss the fucking fuck counter. And would like to see it.
I appreciate that at no point has meh tried to lock us down like that bullshit woot did. Where they wanted you to stay on product, period. And any stray thought would get you deleted. Never mind weirdness we get up to on the side.
@chienfou@unksol ohhhh… he’s already dropped an f(uck)-bomb a couple times. once was when a teammate screwed him over in a game he was playing. that one, he got in trouble. the other was when our dog passed away. obviously i let that one slide.
@carl669@chienfou@unksol - @puppycat also suffers from the occasional curse bomb. My favorite so far happened when she thought no one was around, dropped something that got damaged and just sighed and said, “Well… shit.”
She’s only f-bombed us once.
She too is old enough to read now and loves sneaking a peak over my shoulder any time I’m on my phone or laptop.
@boredashell@Ignorant
Being a poopy face, poopy girl or poopy head is a term of endearment around our house. I was introduced to the whole poopy movement around 30 years ago when my stepson was a toddler. I’d LOVE to be a poopy girl here but that’s never going to happen because I didn’t find you guys until 2019!
Always late to the party!!
ROCK ON POOPY PEOPLE, OWN YOUR !
@mycya4me I’m not currently a big shopper here, but then I’m not currently a big shopper anywhere for anything but groceries.
But I do occasionally find things I consider useful and usually I buy them when they are at a competitive (or better) price.
I used to indulge a lot more, but then that was when I had more family, more money, and a sufficiently larger place to handle the incoming, but illness, a house fire, and life in general took care of that.
IMO, to me, it’s not so much that Meh has changed but rather my life circumstances. I pay my membership (and figure I about break even on that) and come for the entertainment, as several other regulars have said.
@mycya4me@phendrick
I agree with you @mycya4me, there’s times when I have been a big shopper here but lately I haven’t seen anything I needed to have. I still pay my membership fee and I come for the entertainment, a place to talk everyday. I don’t get out much lol
I do wish there were more mehathons like on holidays and stuff to keep things interesting bc sometimes I feel like there’s nothing to comment on in the forums and I’m the kinda person that looks through all the irk pics and comments on a lot of it. @koolhandjoes createathons are always cool and I was kinda disappointed I haven’t seen one for Halloween bc I’ve been all over Pinterest lately looking for something to make. I do like the exchange at the end of the year and getting to personalize a gift for a meh person too.
For the last few months i have a new challenge for myself. Instead of how many faces in a row I can click, it’s how many in a row I can not click (or visit). So far, my record is only 3, but I pretty consistently skip weekends now.
While there have been acknowledged changes, part of nostalgia is who you were and what it was while you were experiencing it. I’m not sure we could go back if we wanted to. Virtually every 80s movie I loved is proof of that.
Not exactly a chicken and egg thing, but folks that were super-active in the community are not here or much less active. Are others less active because of that or just because human attention span is what it is?
I think the mehgic still exists, and we see it during those birthday and other special events, but you can’t keep up that energy every week or burnout will hit. I don’t love $10 IRKs but I accept $5 is too little for that effort, even if it means we’re helping to clear the shelves.
What would I change? Random giveaways maybe? Or the occasional contest to generate more or different engagement? More @snapster probably. That tends to shake the conversation tree. And for the remaining members, more value for that. Free shipping is great, but only if you match with something offered. Maybe discounts? Or inside looks into how @dave selects his wardrobe in the morning? That kind of stuff.
@dzieciom It’s been so long between 'thons that I guess everybody forgot about starting a thread for that. I didn’t even try to grab one this time, so I know that I had to reason to start one. For me, there wan’t anything likely to come up in a Cuisin-a-thon that I’d want, so I didn’t set up any timers or make an effort to watch for IRKs to drop. I suspect that a larger percentage of the IRKs than usual went to casual, accidental buyers who’d never seen them before. They probably pay zero attention to the forums. Loads will have gone to lurkers who simply watch and never participate.
@dzieciom@werehatrack One thing I definitely changed on this last 'thon was that, aside from the mad rush for a potential IRK, I was in no hurry to buy any of the featured Cuisinart items once I realized that they were going to offer a LOT of different items, with some of them not all that different. E.g., how many different blenders did they offer? Or cookware? Etc. Why buy any one particular thing when something you’d like even better (for price, size, extra features, …) might be coming up in hours or even minutes. You can cancel an order within the hour, but what about six hours later? Too much trouble. More convenient, if you spotted something you might be happy with, to put it off until the waning minutes of the 'thon, after you’ve seen all the various offerings and could compare. You do risk a sell-out, but I’m not aware that affected anything I coveted except the IRK.
My suggestion to @Dave, @Snapster, @ whomever, would be to post a catalog of offerings for that day, at the start or conveniently beforehand, maybe even list the order (with IRKs interspersed but not pinpointed). I don’t see how that would hurt sales at all and might increase them.
I do miss the far more frequent Mehrathons last year. I also find that months go by where I check every night and nothing comes up I want to buy. I’ve actually bought more items from Woot in the last 12 months than from Meh, after years of not even paying attention to Woot beyond looking at occasional emails.
Still a VMP but now that the difference between VMP and mehmber has so greatly diminished its more a matter of inertia (and hope for a mehrathon) that I haven’t canceled.
@snapster (since you commented up higher) I have been really busy and didn’t see this thread when it first came out. Things I miss that I wish would come back:
Contests that don’t require talent - or at least who wins isn’t based on that. The how many pieces in the smashed speaker doc, or create weird stuff with x theme (which has been done on and off but not very recently)…
There really haven’t been much in the way of new meh videos - some of those were in the past were really entertaining and yes posting them again means new members enjoy them (so yes you have several markets on the forums) the long time members have nothing new.
VMP folks occasionally getting something as was promised. We no longer even get a VMP only hour - or at least a VMP only irk.
Oh shit reports
IRKS where enough were sold that those with slow internet could load the page before it sold out; a couple of people receiving really weird pallets of stuff and other “jokes”.
Humor items in some of the irks sold making sure some of the people who post in reveal threads get them. And when there are forum member joke potential comments made go with that. The bubble wrap short lived several irk joke was entertaining.
More long running jokes that are helped along by forum staff and picking up on forum member joke worthy comments and “helping them along”. Also when a forum member does something that might be worth repeating, repeat it if they don’t.
Return to some of the original structure if meh (forum use and style and items sold). When pretty much everything here is also on the other sites too and show up over and over… not much incentive to buy (and yes I know I don’t buy much anyway due to budget priorities but I used to enjoy looking more). More videos we used to have more of including things like: ask irk, special ones, the “tours” of meh, weird shit employees did like deboning creatures with leaches (or whatever the heck was going on with that as I no longer remember without going to look), humorous videos, seasonal ones that were new, not just reruns of the past…, keep jokes running - baby arm, etc. and only phase them out when you have a new one people are responding to…
The snarky but humorous write ups that also lead to snarky humorous comments in the forums whether or not someone was buying (no implied criticism of current staff here, rather this is just something I miss, and without concrete corporate goals/plan for how to use those and link them to the forums or they will wander where they wander so to speak).
Using the skills of your existing employees as part of their paid hours, without then creating a work overload for them because they are also doing this too on the forums. I was hoping/expecting a @koolhandjoe event with Halloween this month as that so perfectly would fit what he does on the side (even though I’d never buy any of that because it isn’t how I decorate but I enjoyed looking at the creativity) and was disappointed that didn’t happen.
I am glad to see you seem to have a couple of employees more assigned to the forum after some time without that but I think meh needs to create a strategic plan for the forum, it’s multiple focuses, and address it with the same level of seriousness that you are using to address your other sites/brick and mortar.
While, obviously, there is serendipity involved because forums area two way street, and initially the focus was using the forums to both build community and build the business and you did a good job there. You were extremely fortunate to have @jonT in the role he was in initially as he was very good at what he did (maybe pay him as a consultant in your refocusing of meh forums from the path it wandered down while left to its own devices - NO criticism implied here of the current staff active on the forum - lack of corporate focus and direction while your priorities were on growing other aspects of the business contributed to that, and I am glad you are finally looking at creating goals and plans for meh again after letting it drift in the currents blah blah blah all things you already know and didn’t have time for with everything you were doing during the past couple of growth phases of the business). Return to, amongst other things, a specific goal of building and maintaining community.
Part of that also was letting people get a peak at what goes on behind the scenes, employee lives, interests… There used to be new employee introductions (of course you are now large enough that is not practical but you still could do it with people who have jobs related to what goes on on meh). There was a human interest element that added to the attraction of meh forums rather than the forums are here, go post, but it is rudderless or nearly so from the corporate input into what goes on (so glad you are now looking at this). The comments by snapster, others added to the personal feeling of the forums that I valued and some of what set this “store” forum apart from other ones.
You might want to create a focus group of some of both your long time meh members and newer members whose opinions you value (past and present - including ones who used to be - I think that is important due to “exit interview” value of what they’d have to say) and whose contributions to the forums were/are in line with your goals/plans/initial hopes and dreams and ways you wanted to implement them? That might help get some of the “old meh” back that some of us miss.
I have more to say but probably am close to forum post character limits and have other things I need to do today.
My “more to say” (picking up where I left off, some of which is mentions snapster since he is emperor of meh and founder of the mehdom and we, his subjects, have fucking opinions we want heard )
When you’d toss into irks things like quirky valentines or irk/glen/meh stickers, etc. that adds to making the irks seem “special” and not just a junk dump. Remember the laughs we had over the trashy t-shirts you bought from some used store for irks and then after the fact the photos meh posted about the bin full of them with employees lying in them… that adds to the personalization and builds some of the connections between forum members and meh.
What made your forum special (eg didn’t feel commercial even though you were using it to build customer base too) was that it was about relationships: community -> meh, between meh members and feeling like it was also meh -> community that was a priority with meh. Sense of community is one strong predictor of turnover or retention of employees… and companies that build that with their customers (often centered around a mission although meh’s “mission” you built before isn’t a traditional patagonia/environment kind of mission) also creates customer loyalty (something I am sure you know since you focused on that early on).
That needs hard baked back in. And, as you well know, it is harder/takes more work to rebuild something damaged that build it from scratch. It certainly isn’t destroyed, it has just lost the much, but certainly not all, of the meh -> customer aspect as I suspect meh just didn’t have the time/money to make that a focus as you grew and then throw in the pandemic economic impact - especially since you said once that meh was such a small part of your net profit, but it was still important to you, personally.
You might, once you have a plan you are ready to implement, spend time on the forum talking about the past and why the community was important to you, still is, and why you are rebuilding, why you quit woot (eg it lost the focus you felt was important and part of why you founded both woot and meh) blab blah blah. Then have part of someone’s job description to read the forums specifically to flag for you posts that you might consider responding to (giving them specifics to look for) or threads you might think about creating based on what is going on on the forum. That will bring back your involvement which people liked (remember the comments about how CEO’s never participate on other company forums and how people liked that you did) without being a total time sink for you.
Some of the mission of meh is/was? quirky which people liked. Make this mission obvious in the forums (so to the customers) and your employees (so that is part of new employee socialization and then also rewarding for behaviors consistent with that). Buying into a mission drives all sorts of behavior that is positive for the company, customers and community created between them. Of course feeling included comes from community building and reaching out efforts by the organization (both at the employee and customer level).
In my opinion one important thing Meh needs to do is salvage the visible community building, trying to make forum members feel included, thus creating relationships and rebuild all this,. meh needs to make the forum members feel like meh cares about the community and is actively trying to build and maintain it.
Sure some of it is your products, how you present them, how you sell them… (which ties into community, mission, etc.) but when you rebuild don’t forget about the people part.
Anyway - my advice might be worth what you paid for it - nothing (grin) - but have mouth will travel. LOL But there was something special here originally… kind of have to dig to find it now. I hope some effort is made to bring it back.
what’s with all the food stuff? the old purple woot never had food. too many bugs to eat it HAHA! that place really had the great chats going on. here too though. the food/supplement products all the time kinda suck
A can of general cat food costs $1 and weighs 5 oz net. That’s $3.20/lb. I can get skinless chicken breasts on sale for $2/lb. Guess what weird substitution I’m going to make? And why is cat food so much that Costco is making their own brand now? And why doesn’t MEH sell cat food?
It’s like a logic puzzle. Do we miss your $5.99 or not miss it. I vote we miss it. What’s next?
Is old Meh 2021?
suddenly I’m thinking we closed some kind of inception loop and now we’re Woot again
@snapster Except you’re looking more like the junior version of the new Woot instead of the old Woot. The quirky little tweaks are vanishing, the self-deprecating and sketchy-product-disparaging remarks have gotten rarer and a lot less edgy, the damnstupid 99-cent fecking price thing has wormed its way in…
I half expect you to stop asking “Who’s buying this crap?” any day now.
All of that. And you can see how it has taken the fun out of the picture. For one thing, the forums have gotten a lot less active without the various levels of enthusiasm/loathing, particularly over IRKs scored or missed. Even the snake oil items have become … banal.
I wish I had a solid suggestion about how to restore it to what it was, but some of the evolution has happened because of things you can’t fix. Nobody even makes a solar-powered-knife-sharpener-speaker-dock now. What’s a desperately jaded buyer supposed to do, when the Chinese product fairs have pretty much shut down because of the plague, and nobody’s actually making much of anything useful elsewhere?
@werehatrack I’ve come to appreciate pitch-forks out as a sign of passion that so many communities never get to experience, so pardon me if I have nostalgia for it in a perverse way.
Another enjoyment is that as a company we have repositioned ourselves the past few months (staff and budget) to focus more on Meh. So it’s an ideal time to hear our problems freshly presented.
@snapster @werehatrack
Me sitting here with my 20 pounds of chocolate filled marshmallows.
/giphy monkey-side-eye
@snapster I’d say “Old Meh” was before the pandemic. I think that event changed expectations and attitudes even more than is realized, even in the merchandising field.
People are both spending like drunk sailors (“live for today”) and economizing like refugees (“save for the next rainy day”), depending on their means. Some people have split personalities and do both.
https://www.marketplace.org/2022/09/30/the-economy-is-acting-weird-not-even-economists-can-fully-say-why/
[Also see the post by @boredashell immediately below and mine much further down.]
@snapster @werehatrack Also, too, there’s something that happened, starting a couple of years ago, that I saw manifested in my “sudden” inability to ever, ever again score an IRK, even though my connectivity and pingback speed here has more than doubled. I don’t know exactly why, but it felt like bots had written scripts to scoop all of them up in a couple of ms, or something. And while IRKs are just a game, feeling like you can’t even compete on a level field is kind of disheartening. It just kind of put a damper on my enthusiasm for hanging around as much. And the less I participate, the lower the feedback loop, so I then participate even less.
I guess I’m saying that 3-4 years ago, it felt “fun” to come to Meh, and hang out for a while. It doesn’t really seem that much fun, anymore. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
@snapster @werehatrack
I’m wondering if the FOMO factor plays a role in this. When it was just meh, folks knew that if one didn’t purchase the item that day, it might not come back. With other Mercatalyst outlets, however, it’s pretty much expected that an item would be subsequently available again, which lowers the impulse to buy right away.
@CBL_WV @snapster @werehatrack this.
@CBL_WV @snapster @werehatrack I mean I could never ever get an irk. Ever. Came close maybe twice.
So people who were like “I get one every time it’s super easy” mmm no it wasnt. It was supposed to be rare and it allways felt like you could not compete for most people. At least to me. So. If that’s your complaint… Meh.
I still check meh for the cats and the stories and just in case there is a good deal. I obviously would like to see more good deals that I would want to buy though, but. Meh.
Obviously I miss matt and some of the earlier weirdness
@snapster what happened in the quip vs mediocre toothbrush lawsuit? Settled out of court with an NDA?
I feel. Life hit hard these last years and my wife and I had a baby right in the middle of it. Meh hasn’t been a priority at all to me like it used to and I’m finding it hard for me to reignite that spark it once gave me after having found a rhythm and starting to get back into some sort of normalcy. I have been apart of this since 2015 maybe 16, can’t remember, but even with me trying to remind myself daily to at least click the button everyday I still have little to no interest. I don’t know how I could but I would definitely try and help bring some magic back into meh if I could. Maybe I’ll win the lottery
Oh and i just noticed I’m a poop… found the cherry on top i guess
@boredashell I think the poops are funny but I get that not everyone does. If you would like it removed please contact support and they can help you out with that.
@Ignorant Definitely shocked me but it’s my badge i have earned. I can see it growing in me. A cat would be a cool badge though. I would totally trade poop for cat if they existed
@boredashell @Ignorant lol I was poop for a long time and will probably be again shortly. I needed some shorts and there were gnats so the swatters/bug zappers we’re… Extremely satisfying but it was the first time in a long time
@unksol that was a very short time.
@boredashell @Ignorant I don’t buy much either. Or check in every day. I mean. I have it in my list of daily websites I check in a row with some comics, then move on. I don’t always check the forums Some nights/weekends I’m able to drop into the forums and get a good laugh/make some comments/check the goat thread.
I gave up on irks a LONG time ago. And why it’s so easy for some. Probably my abysmal upload spead. The community is good. If they sell something I want great if they don’t. Meh
@Ignorant hmm I am back to poop lol. Guess I already did cancel. I mean the model is if you buy one thing you sign up, then if you buy anything else free shipping, if you don’t cancel. So…
I wasVMP for a few years I think but. Meh just stopped selling things I wanted often enough. Which. Was fine as long as someone wants it
@boredashell @Ignorant If you get a cat, it comes with a lifetime supply of poop.
@Ignorant @unksol
What does the poop mean, I just noticed the poop icon.
@Ignorant @Star2236 @unksol VMP that fell out of Mehmber status.
@Ignorant @Star2236 @werehatrack technically mehmbers that quit. At least I thought it applied to mehmbers.
If only once upon a time vmps who quit got it when they quit each time. That would be amusing. Special poop vs regular poop lol
@Ignorant @Star2236 @werehatrack someone got DEEPLY offended at the whole thing when it was implemented. And had like a rage quit. I want too say unixrab but he was so anti vmp I can’t remember if he ever got suckered into it. Site:meh.com is not turning it up.
@Ignorant @Star2236 @werehatrack
Lots of membership/poop discussion here when mehmbership was introduced back in 2018
https://meh.com/forum/topics/membership-revisited?sort=most-likes
Also @carl669 what is the fucking fuck count?
@carl669 @unksol
Counter broken. Use fingers.
@carl669 @mike808 I officially miss the fucking fuck counter. And would like to see it.
I appreciate that at no point has meh tried to lock us down like that bullshit woot did. Where they wanted you to stay on product, period. And any stray thought would get you deleted. Never mind weirdness we get up to on the side.
@carl669 @unksol
I think carl had to tone it down once his kid got old enough to read over his shoulder…
@carl669 @chienfou well he didn’t HAVE to teach him to read. Also. If anyone was going to teach someone’s kid to blurt out “fuck” lol
@carl669 @chienfou @unksol
I guess that’s another fuck to add to the count, then.
@chienfou @unksol ohhhh… he’s already dropped an f(uck)-bomb a couple times. once was when a teammate screwed him over in a game he was playing. that one, he got in trouble. the other was when our dog passed away. obviously i let that one slide.
i’ll try to update the fuck count later
@carl669
Both those sound pretty fuckin’ reasonable… Just saying.
I’m sure you’re raising him to become an awesome adult.
POPSOCKETS! COURT DOCKETS! FOLK ROCK HITS! AWESOME!
@carl669 @chienfou @unksol - @puppycat also suffers from the occasional curse bomb. My favorite so far happened when she thought no one was around, dropped something that got damaged and just sighed and said, “Well… shit.”
She’s only f-bombed us once.
She too is old enough to read now and loves sneaking a peak over my shoulder any time I’m on my phone or laptop.
@Thumperchick
She obviously has a good handle on the syntax and used it appropriately. Kudos!
@boredashell @Ignorant
I was introduced to the whole poopy movement around 30 years ago when my stepson was a toddler. I’d LOVE to be a poopy girl here but that’s never going to happen because I didn’t find you guys until 2019!
!
Being a poopy face, poopy girl or poopy head is a term of endearment around our house.
Always late to the party!!
ROCK ON POOPY PEOPLE, OWN YOUR
Wow… I can’t imagine how they toughed it out for an entire 18 months or so.
@chienfou I wonder if they ever bought anything.
@yakkoTDI
16 orders…
I am thinking also of dropping my membership … I have not seen anything I wanted in weeks. I don’t need stuff cluttering up my place.
@mycya4me
@mycya4me I’m not currently a big shopper here, but then I’m not currently a big shopper anywhere for anything but groceries.
But I do occasionally find things I consider useful and usually I buy them when they are at a competitive (or better) price.
I used to indulge a lot more, but then that was when I had more family, more money, and a sufficiently larger place to handle the incoming, but illness, a house fire, and life in general took care of that.
IMO, to me, it’s not so much that Meh has changed but rather my life circumstances. I pay my membership (and figure I about break even on that) and come for the entertainment, as several other regulars have said.
@mycya4me @phendrick
I agree with you @mycya4me, there’s times when I have been a big shopper here but lately I haven’t seen anything I needed to have. I still pay my membership fee and I come for the entertainment, a place to talk everyday. I don’t get out much lol
I do wish there were more mehathons like on holidays and stuff to keep things interesting bc sometimes I feel like there’s nothing to comment on in the forums and I’m the kinda person that looks through all the irk pics and comments on a lot of it. @koolhandjoes createathons are always cool and I was kinda disappointed I haven’t seen one for Halloween bc I’ve been all over Pinterest lately looking for something to make. I do like the exchange at the end of the year and getting to personalize a gift for a meh person too.
I miss pasta drop. My mom’s face when she got 100 pounds of pasta, or my friends disappointment when he only got 40.
For the last few months i have a new challenge for myself. Instead of how many faces in a row I can click, it’s how many in a row I can not click (or visit). So far, my record is only 3, but I pretty consistently skip weekends now.
While there have been acknowledged changes, part of nostalgia is who you were and what it was while you were experiencing it. I’m not sure we could go back if we wanted to. Virtually every 80s movie I loved is proof of that.
Not exactly a chicken and egg thing, but folks that were super-active in the community are not here or much less active. Are others less active because of that or just because human attention span is what it is?
I think the mehgic still exists, and we see it during those birthday and other special events, but you can’t keep up that energy every week or burnout will hit. I don’t love $10 IRKs but I accept $5 is too little for that effort, even if it means we’re helping to clear the shelves.
What would I change? Random giveaways maybe? Or the occasional contest to generate more or different engagement? More @snapster probably. That tends to shake the conversation tree. And for the remaining members, more value for that. Free shipping is great, but only if you match with something offered. Maybe discounts? Or inside looks into how @dave selects his wardrobe in the morning? That kind of stuff.
@ACraigL
Do people not do IRK shipping threads like we used to?
Is that because they ship quick and not take weeks?
My IRK shipped and my air purifier hasn’t?
This isn’t the old meh for sure
@dzieciom It’s been so long between 'thons that I guess everybody forgot about starting a thread for that. I didn’t even try to grab one this time, so I know that I had to reason to start one. For me, there wan’t anything likely to come up in a Cuisin-a-thon that I’d want, so I didn’t set up any timers or make an effort to watch for IRKs to drop. I suspect that a larger percentage of the IRKs than usual went to casual, accidental buyers who’d never seen them before. They probably pay zero attention to the forums. Loads will have gone to lurkers who simply watch and never participate.
@dzieciom @werehatrack One thing I definitely changed on this last 'thon was that, aside from the mad rush for a potential IRK, I was in no hurry to buy any of the featured Cuisinart items once I realized that they were going to offer a LOT of different items, with some of them not all that different. E.g., how many different blenders did they offer? Or cookware? Etc. Why buy any one particular thing when something you’d like even better (for price, size, extra features, …) might be coming up in hours or even minutes. You can cancel an order within the hour, but what about six hours later? Too much trouble. More convenient, if you spotted something you might be happy with, to put it off until the waning minutes of the 'thon, after you’ve seen all the various offerings and could compare. You do risk a sell-out, but I’m not aware that affected anything I coveted except the IRK.
My suggestion to @Dave, @Snapster, @ whomever, would be to post a catalog of offerings for that day, at the start or conveniently beforehand, maybe even list the order (with IRKs interspersed but not pinpointed). I don’t see how that would hurt sales at all and might increase them.
@dave @phendrick @snapster @werehatrack Yeah I imagine next thon will be more random. I agree there were too many blenders/processors this go around.
I did buy an air purifier at least, mostly because I wanted one before even logging on that day.
@connorbush
nope… that’s just the correct amount of bother!
I do miss the far more frequent Mehrathons last year. I also find that months go by where I check every night and nothing comes up I want to buy. I’ve actually bought more items from Woot in the last 12 months than from Meh, after years of not even paying attention to Woot beyond looking at occasional emails.
Still a VMP but now that the difference between VMP and mehmber has so greatly diminished its more a matter of inertia (and hope for a mehrathon) that I haven’t canceled.
@duodec I am not sure there is a difference at this point. They have dropped pretty much all that was promised with VMP.
@duodec @Kidsandliz All not pretty much all.
Long Live Meh…I love you guys to the moon and back.
@cbilyak
/giphy we love you, too!
@cbilyak @Thumperchick
Awwww…
@snapster (since you commented up higher) I have been really busy and didn’t see this thread when it first came out. Things I miss that I wish would come back:
Contests that don’t require talent - or at least who wins isn’t based on that. The how many pieces in the smashed speaker doc, or create weird stuff with x theme (which has been done on and off but not very recently)…
There really haven’t been much in the way of new meh videos - some of those were in the past were really entertaining and yes posting them again means new members enjoy them (so yes you have several markets on the forums) the long time members have nothing new.
VMP folks occasionally getting something as was promised. We no longer even get a VMP only hour - or at least a VMP only irk.
Oh shit reports
IRKS where enough were sold that those with slow internet could load the page before it sold out; a couple of people receiving really weird pallets of stuff and other “jokes”.
Humor items in some of the irks sold making sure some of the people who post in reveal threads get them. And when there are forum member joke potential comments made go with that. The bubble wrap short lived several irk joke was entertaining.
More long running jokes that are helped along by forum staff and picking up on forum member joke worthy comments and “helping them along”. Also when a forum member does something that might be worth repeating, repeat it if they don’t.
Return to some of the original structure if meh (forum use and style and items sold). When pretty much everything here is also on the other sites too and show up over and over… not much incentive to buy (and yes I know I don’t buy much anyway due to budget priorities but I used to enjoy looking more). More videos we used to have more of including things like: ask irk, special ones, the “tours” of meh, weird shit employees did like deboning creatures with leaches (or whatever the heck was going on with that as I no longer remember without going to look), humorous videos, seasonal ones that were new, not just reruns of the past…, keep jokes running - baby arm, etc. and only phase them out when you have a new one people are responding to…
The snarky but humorous write ups that also lead to snarky humorous comments in the forums whether or not someone was buying (no implied criticism of current staff here, rather this is just something I miss, and without concrete corporate goals/plan for how to use those and link them to the forums or they will wander where they wander so to speak).
Using the skills of your existing employees as part of their paid hours, without then creating a work overload for them because they are also doing this too on the forums. I was hoping/expecting a @koolhandjoe event with Halloween this month as that so perfectly would fit what he does on the side (even though I’d never buy any of that because it isn’t how I decorate but I enjoyed looking at the creativity) and was disappointed that didn’t happen.
I am glad to see you seem to have a couple of employees more assigned to the forum after some time without that but I think meh needs to create a strategic plan for the forum, it’s multiple focuses, and address it with the same level of seriousness that you are using to address your other sites/brick and mortar.
While, obviously, there is serendipity involved because forums area two way street, and initially the focus was using the forums to both build community and build the business and you did a good job there. You were extremely fortunate to have @jonT in the role he was in initially as he was very good at what he did (maybe pay him as a consultant in your refocusing of meh forums from the path it wandered down while left to its own devices - NO criticism implied here of the current staff active on the forum - lack of corporate focus and direction while your priorities were on growing other aspects of the business contributed to that, and I am glad you are finally looking at creating goals and plans for meh again after letting it drift in the currents blah blah blah all things you already know and didn’t have time for with everything you were doing during the past couple of growth phases of the business). Return to, amongst other things, a specific goal of building and maintaining community.
Part of that also was letting people get a peak at what goes on behind the scenes, employee lives, interests… There used to be new employee introductions (of course you are now large enough that is not practical but you still could do it with people who have jobs related to what goes on on meh). There was a human interest element that added to the attraction of meh forums rather than the forums are here, go post, but it is rudderless or nearly so from the corporate input into what goes on (so glad you are now looking at this). The comments by snapster, others added to the personal feeling of the forums that I valued and some of what set this “store” forum apart from other ones.
You might want to create a focus group of some of both your long time meh members and newer members whose opinions you value (past and present - including ones who used to be - I think that is important due to “exit interview” value of what they’d have to say) and whose contributions to the forums were/are in line with your goals/plans/initial hopes and dreams and ways you wanted to implement them? That might help get some of the “old meh” back that some of us miss.
My “more to say” (picking up where I left off, some of which is mentions snapster since he is emperor of meh and founder of the mehdom and we, his subjects, have fucking opinions we want heard
)
When you’d toss into irks things like quirky valentines or irk/glen/meh stickers, etc. that adds to making the irks seem “special” and not just a junk dump. Remember the laughs we had over the trashy t-shirts you bought from some used store for irks and then after the fact the photos meh posted about the bin full of them with employees lying in them… that adds to the personalization and builds some of the connections between forum members and meh.
What made your forum special (eg didn’t feel commercial even though you were using it to build customer base too) was that it was about relationships: community -> meh, between meh members and feeling like it was also meh -> community that was a priority with meh. Sense of community is one strong predictor of turnover or retention of employees… and companies that build that with their customers (often centered around a mission although meh’s “mission” you built before isn’t a traditional patagonia/environment kind of mission) also creates customer loyalty (something I am sure you know since you focused on that early on).
That needs hard baked back in. And, as you well know, it is harder/takes more work to rebuild something damaged that build it from scratch. It certainly isn’t destroyed, it has just lost the much, but certainly not all, of the meh -> customer aspect as I suspect meh just didn’t have the time/money to make that a focus as you grew and then throw in the pandemic economic impact - especially since you said once that meh was such a small part of your net profit, but it was still important to you, personally.
You might, once you have a plan you are ready to implement, spend time on the forum talking about the past and why the community was important to you, still is, and why you are rebuilding, why you quit woot (eg it lost the focus you felt was important and part of why you founded both woot and meh) blab blah blah. Then have part of someone’s job description to read the forums specifically to flag for you posts that you might consider responding to (giving them specifics to look for) or threads you might think about creating based on what is going on on the forum. That will bring back your involvement which people liked (remember the comments about how CEO’s never participate on other company forums and how people liked that you did) without being a total time sink for you.
Some of the mission of meh is/was? quirky which people liked. Make this mission obvious in the forums (so to the customers) and your employees (so that is part of new employee socialization and then also rewarding for behaviors consistent with that). Buying into a mission drives all sorts of behavior that is positive for the company, customers and community created between them. Of course feeling included comes from community building and reaching out efforts by the organization (both at the employee and customer level).
In my opinion one important thing Meh needs to do is salvage the visible community building, trying to make forum members feel included, thus creating relationships and rebuild all this,. meh needs to make the forum members feel like meh cares about the community and is actively trying to build and maintain it.
Sure some of it is your products, how you present them, how you sell them… (which ties into community, mission, etc.) but when you rebuild don’t forget about the people part.
Anyway - my advice might be worth what you paid for it - nothing (grin) - but have mouth will travel. LOL But there was something special here originally… kind of have to dig to find it now. I hope some effort is made to bring it back.
what’s with all the food stuff? the old purple woot never had food. too many bugs to eat it HAHA! that place really had the great chats going on. here too though. the food/supplement products all the time kinda suck
A can of general cat food costs $1 and weighs 5 oz net. That’s $3.20/lb. I can get skinless chicken breasts on sale for $2/lb. Guess what weird substitution I’m going to make? And why is cat food so much that Costco is making their own brand now? And why doesn’t MEH sell cat food?
@candelabra
Because meh is going to the dogs?