@werehatrack honestly… it killed the mehrathon for me.
I knew there were no IRKs coming up… I knew my budget didn’t afford me spending $100 on crap this month… I checked in on the mehrathon like 10 times total over its two day run… I’m normally double that in a single day when a Mehrathon is running.
@OnionSoup And putting it on SideDeal also means that only the staff has access to the numbers for how many were sold, which is another tiny bit of the traditional community lore lost in the new process.
You wan’t my last IRK? It was the nail in the coffin. It still is in the attic, can’t trash it for some reason. Absolute junk. Never again. 99? There isn’t a single thing that anyone has posted in an IRK that is worth that. Yes, years ago, but not anymore.
I got my last IRK it was the $17.76 one. A total disappointment. Just 3 worthless items and the tote. It was not what I expected. There used to be at least something of worth in the box. It was always fun winning the IRK and if it was garbage it was worth the $5 and the anticipation to see what you bought. Now they are too much $$$ and just buying it at anytime is not fun. To top that off they now have nothing of value. As Meh seems to have made the $5 IRK a thing of the past I’m done. I hope you all have better luck than I did.
@kcface@tinamarie1974 OTOH, there’s a widespread impression that they used to be less predictable in their reasons for being “meh”. It has been quite a while since a guy got several large boxes of unused but returned women’s briefs, for instance. OTOH, I have been guilty of posing the possibility that they might dump the entire remaining stock of TrackRs on one carefully selected target, an utterance I hope I don’t end up having to Regret. (But if they did, what would the replacement be?)
@kcface@tinamarie1974@werehatrack
That’s it, exactly. Even the good ones are sensibly good, not surprisingly funny good. I once got a 3’ plush Minion - so fun!
@kcface@Kyeh@tinamarie1974@werehatrack The randomness is what was great. I got many trash boxes but I got a few good ones. Shark Vacuum, Ninja blender where the main jar was cracked but all the others were fine, luggage. It was fun but now everything is trash and there is no real anticipation of getting something cool. This has become woot 2.0. I am not even sure why I keep my membership at this point.
@haydesigner What seems to be driving the dislike is the need to shell out for $98 worth of other crap in order to bring the IRK down to a buck. It’s not like anything on Meh is likely to be a necessity that someone would have been buying anyway, and having to spend $98 is still a $98 expenditure even if it also nets the spender some stuff that is nominally worth that price. At the old $5 price, it was similar to the outlay for a cheap specialty coffee (or so I’m told), and the cost was therefore inconsequential; it was the successful acquisition that was the goal, less than the anticipation that this might be the IRK that has the Cuisinart goodies in it.
Ah but you may well have if you didn’t need enough to actually spend $100 (or to spend anything at all) so had to buy things you really didn’t want all that much to get an irk. It’s the irk people want, not all that added stuff when you look at what an irk is about. An irk isn’t just about the stuff in the box either. It is an event. It’s about the hunt, the satisfaction of getting one at a price you can justify wasting when the odds are stacked against you at a price you can justify even if it is full of crap worth a total of 50 cents.
It’s about the speculation of which day near meh’s birthday will the big event happen, or the semi obscure hints sent out several days in advance via email that cause you (if you get or even read the emails) to suspect one is in the works. The resultant discussion online where you wonder if it is wise to even to do that as it alerts more people (so increases the odds against you) an irk might be coming (via a mehrathon - although in earlier days that is not how this happened).
It’s about being able to complain that you didn’t get one or were thwarted by the spinning wheel of death as the page won’t load, the refilling green bar that ends in failure or in rare cases success, being hit with a zillion captchas in a row, complaining when yours finally arrived (and discussing the waiting for it to get here) or complaining it is worth nothing more than the bag, or gloat if you hit the rare jackpot or got one of Joe’s dolls, or wonder about meh’s sanity when you get a surprise pallet of broken TVs or boxes of XXXL old lady underwear, or something equally as weird or insane… It is about the anticipation of when it is going to show up, the conversation that happens while you wait. It’s an event spread over days. It’s not just about the box.
Now it seems like a method meh uses to increase sales of things we mostly otherwise wouldn’t buy by making us buy the stuff to get an irk which is then mostly filled with junk they can’t seem to get rid of (of course that later part hasn’t changed although there is more of that kind of stuff and less of the “oh wow! I got that cool thing” in them these days). The thrill of the hunt is gone; the thrill of the event is no more. And those without the required discretionary funds are excluded.
Of course this is a for profit company whose brick and mortar just failed (per others, I haven’t checked) and so they have a lot of crap to get rid of and need to keep their balance sheet in the black. We’d not even have a meh if they couldn’t make enough money to stay open. They aren’t here for us as their primary goal as much as we’d like to think otherwise. As snapster said point blank some years ago, he keeps us around for nostalgia sake, not because we contribute much to his bottom line. Of course meh build a community, we are vested in and value, we like some of the traditions that have gone way and as a community we have our own agenda and priorities - of which not all of them are in synch with meh and their goals as a for profit business.
@haydesigner I can’t speak for everyone… but IRKs are the main part of the Mehrathon fun for many, and that includes me.
I know the idea of setting the irk and giving it a rebate at $100 to encourage people to spend more so the irk is free. If the Irk was $20 or $15 it might have had that effect on me… I would look harder for something I might want to buy.
But $100, For me it probably had the opposite effect. I normally buy one or two items each Mehrathon. I almost never spend $100. Knowing I was out of the hunt from the first moment I didn’t keep checking back to see what’s for sale like I normally might. I ended up buying nothing (rather than my normal average of two or three items).
@OnionSoup
I think you nailed it. 100%, dead on. The only way it fails is if the very first thing I see is a yowza-must-have item that’s right at the refund zone importance point, AND it’s on a day when the bank account is fat enough to handle it. Yeah, $98 may only be two tanks of gas or a solo dinner at Fogo de Chao, but these days, I’m driving a lot less because of the gas prices, and I’m not going to be seen at Fogo on my own dime, no way, not gonna happen. Ergo, a C-note ticket purchase requirement means that an IRK is no longer a greatly-sought-after mystery thing, it’s a sleazeball Free Gift Just For Attending Our Wealth Building Presentation (Did We Mention That It’s OUR Wealth We’re Building?)
(Okay, maybe that last was a little harsh. But that’s how it really feels from this side of the wallet. Not gonna lie, it really is.)
Not discontinued, just not currently being supplied in the Traditional manner. Today, they are over here.
@werehatrack There is a discussion.
@werehatrack honestly… it killed the mehrathon for me.
I knew there were no IRKs coming up… I knew my budget didn’t afford me spending $100 on crap this month… I checked in on the mehrathon like 10 times total over its two day run… I’m normally double that in a single day when a Mehrathon is running.
@OnionSoup And putting it on SideDeal also means that only the staff has access to the numbers for how many were sold, which is another tiny bit of the traditional community lore lost in the new process.
@werehatrack why? That was the fun of it, to spend $5 for random junk
With the current pricing structure, there are effectively no more traditional IRKs, only big spenders.
KuoH
You wan’t my last IRK? It was the nail in the coffin. It still is in the attic, can’t trash it for some reason. Absolute junk. Never again. 99? There isn’t a single thing that anyone has posted in an IRK that is worth that. Yes, years ago, but not anymore.
I got my last IRK it was the $17.76 one. A total disappointment. Just 3 worthless items and the tote. It was not what I expected. There used to be at least something of worth in the box. It was always fun winning the IRK and if it was garbage it was worth the $5 and the anticipation to see what you bought. Now they are too much $$$ and just buying it at anytime is not fun. To top that off they now have nothing of value. As Meh seems to have made the $5 IRK a thing of the past I’m done. I hope you all have better luck than I did.
@kcface
Not true. There has never been a guarantee of any “good” items.
@kcface @tinamarie1974 OTOH, there’s a widespread impression that they used to be less predictable in their reasons for being “meh”. It has been quite a while since a guy got several large boxes of unused but returned women’s briefs, for instance. OTOH, I have been guilty of posing the possibility that they might dump the entire remaining stock of TrackRs on one carefully selected target, an utterance I hope I don’t end up having to Regret. (But if they did, what would the replacement be?)
@kcface @werehatrack the whimsy is gone…
@kcface @tinamarie1974 @werehatrack
That’s it, exactly. Even the good ones are sensibly good, not surprisingly funny good. I once got a 3’ plush Minion - so fun!
@kcface @Kyeh @tinamarie1974 @werehatrack The randomness is what was great. I got many trash boxes but I got a few good ones. Shark Vacuum, Ninja blender where the main jar was cracked but all the others were fine, luggage. It was fun but now everything is trash and there is no real anticipation of getting something cool. This has become woot 2.0. I am not even sure why I keep my membership at this point.
Seconding the not liking the sidedeal requirement. I can deal with the possibility of a box of useless stuff for 10 bux. ( I am a SA goon afterall)
But spending 99 bux to get a box of junk… no thanks.
Why is everyone acting like you actually spent $100 on an IRK???
You didn’t.
You basically got it for free, assuming you bought things during the marathon.
You wanted those things that you bought, right?
And Meh is paying you back for the IRK, right?
So you didn’t waste $100. So please stop complaining like you did.
/giphy complainers be complaining
@haydesigner What seems to be driving the dislike is the need to shell out for $98 worth of other crap in order to bring the IRK down to a buck. It’s not like anything on Meh is likely to be a necessity that someone would have been buying anyway, and having to spend $98 is still a $98 expenditure even if it also nets the spender some stuff that is nominally worth that price. At the old $5 price, it was similar to the outlay for a cheap specialty coffee (or so I’m told), and the cost was therefore inconsequential; it was the successful acquisition that was the goal, less than the anticipation that this might be the IRK that has the Cuisinart goodies in it.
@haydesigner
Ah but you may well have if you didn’t need enough to actually spend $100 (or to spend anything at all) so had to buy things you really didn’t want all that much to get an irk. It’s the irk people want, not all that added stuff when you look at what an irk is about. An irk isn’t just about the stuff in the box either. It is an event. It’s about the hunt, the satisfaction of getting one at a price you can justify wasting when the odds are stacked against you at a price you can justify even if it is full of crap worth a total of 50 cents.
It’s about the speculation of which day near meh’s birthday will the big event happen, or the semi obscure hints sent out several days in advance via email that cause you (if you get or even read the emails) to suspect one is in the works. The resultant discussion online where you wonder if it is wise to even to do that as it alerts more people (so increases the odds against you) an irk might be coming (via a mehrathon - although in earlier days that is not how this happened).
It’s about being able to complain that you didn’t get one or were thwarted by the spinning wheel of death as the page won’t load, the refilling green bar that ends in failure or in rare cases success, being hit with a zillion captchas in a row, complaining when yours finally arrived (and discussing the waiting for it to get here) or complaining it is worth nothing more than the bag, or gloat if you hit the rare jackpot or got one of Joe’s dolls, or wonder about meh’s sanity when you get a surprise pallet of broken TVs or boxes of XXXL old lady underwear, or something equally as weird or insane… It is about the anticipation of when it is going to show up, the conversation that happens while you wait. It’s an event spread over days. It’s not just about the box.
Now it seems like a method meh uses to increase sales of things we mostly otherwise wouldn’t buy by making us buy the stuff to get an irk which is then mostly filled with junk they can’t seem to get rid of (of course that later part hasn’t changed although there is more of that kind of stuff and less of the “oh wow! I got that cool thing” in them these days). The thrill of the hunt is gone; the thrill of the event is no more. And those without the required discretionary funds are excluded.
Of course this is a for profit company whose brick and mortar just failed (per others, I haven’t checked) and so they have a lot of crap to get rid of and need to keep their balance sheet in the black. We’d not even have a meh if they couldn’t make enough money to stay open. They aren’t here for us as their primary goal as much as we’d like to think otherwise. As snapster said point blank some years ago, he keeps us around for nostalgia sake, not because we contribute much to his bottom line. Of course meh build a community, we are vested in and value, we like some of the traditions that have gone way and as a community we have our own agenda and priorities - of which not all of them are in synch with meh and their goals as a for profit business.
Greetings, new robot friend. In time you will come to accept your robotic ways.
@haydesigner I can’t speak for everyone… but IRKs are the main part of the Mehrathon fun for many, and that includes me.
I know the idea of setting the irk and giving it a rebate at $100 to encourage people to spend more so the irk is free. If the Irk was $20 or $15 it might have had that effect on me… I would look harder for something I might want to buy.
But $100, For me it probably had the opposite effect. I normally buy one or two items each Mehrathon. I almost never spend $100. Knowing I was out of the hunt from the first moment I didn’t keep checking back to see what’s for sale like I normally might. I ended up buying nothing (rather than my normal average of two or three items).
@haydesigner @OnionSoup
/giphy 100%
@OnionSoup
I think you nailed it. 100%, dead on. The only way it fails is if the very first thing I see is a yowza-must-have item that’s right at the refund zone importance point, AND it’s on a day when the bank account is fat enough to handle it. Yeah, $98 may only be two tanks of gas or a solo dinner at Fogo de Chao, but these days, I’m driving a lot less because of the gas prices, and I’m not going to be seen at Fogo on my own dime, no way, not gonna happen. Ergo, a C-note ticket purchase requirement means that an IRK is no longer a greatly-sought-after mystery thing, it’s a sleazeball Free Gift Just For Attending Our Wealth Building Presentation (Did We Mention That It’s OUR Wealth We’re Building?)
(Okay, maybe that last was a little harsh. But that’s how it really feels from this side of the wallet. Not gonna lie, it really is.)
@Kidsandliz Not TL, Did Read, no wasted words IMO, and yeah. Just yeah.