That old site's crossword puzzle contest
7I feel like the kid who spent way too many Christmases being disappointed. I just don't seem to care any more. I used to spend countless hours trying to answer questions and win the elusive bag. However, the site is just pathetically bad (and the prices are absolutely nothing to get excited about) so I've lost interest. I sort of feel like I've lost an old friend due to no fault of my own. We've just drifted apart... I know there are still a few people here that frequent both sites, but overall, do you find you simply care less and less about 'them'?
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You can say woot ;)
@Thumperchick You beat me to it. And I buy more from there than I do from here, although I don't have the statistical means to correct for hundreds of items on sale there vs. 1 here.
@Thumperchick I can't. Just because I don't want to. The pending divorce hurts too much.
@Thumperchick The last item besides a BoC I bough there was a pair of earphones in July. And those weren't even for me. I bought a few shirts before that (the July 4th shirt and The Shining Lego girls). Last actual item I found worthy of buying for me was the Gyro screwdriver back in March. I truly hate the overkill of products they now push.
I have been a woot customer since 2008, not quite from the beginning, but a customer long enough to remember the awesome deals on the "offs".. After I get my meh face each day, I find myself remembering to check woot, and then the disappointment hits again...
@mikibell how many in a row now?
@mikibell My sentiments exactly. I'm almost ready to quit looking at Woot. :(
@mikibell It's so ingrained in me to check it out every morning (or night if I'm up). But every damn time I go there I take one look at the Plus items just on the main page and I find it revolting. Today there are 23 Plus categories just on that page. One day I counted and there were over 200 items for sale on the main tab. I didn't even waste my time looking at the other categories.
@Cinoclav Don't even bother trying to look at woot's plus items on the official website. Go to wootstalker.com to see them all on one page.
@cengland0 I've done that but it's no better. I simply have no interest in looking at that many items trying to find a worthwhile deal. I was okay with the expansion into different .woot categories at first. But even that became overkill. Combine electronics and computers. Combine home and tools and garden. Or just throw in the towel altogether and rename it Amazon Jr.
@mikibell I don't check Woot anymore. Used to buy about once a month from them. Haven't now in over a year. No great deals anymore. Started coming here now daily.
@alacercogitatus My studious-cowardly-journey has 51 in a row and 89 in total. Was out of the country in August :( Missed an entire week of Meh faces!!
@OnionSoup I spend wayyyy too much money here!!! I can't even tell you how many times I have purchased items on meh! (I forgot to hit the send me an email button a few times :) ).. In 6 years at woot, only 128 purchase.
Woot's spirit lives on here. That's all that matters.
@BillLehecka So very true. The original spirit! Which reminds me, as it's probably not said often enough... Thank you @snapster for bringing back the fun.
They still sell BOC's? Seriously, though, they either obscure them heavily and eke them out one at a time, or tie them to their multiple social media accounts. And when it arrives, if you are lucky enough to get one, it's three pieces of dollar store crap. I don't expect or require the high-value crap (I did get an epic BOC once including a laptop and an iRobot Looj), just something unique. Old woot once put in my bag a little crystal sphere painted with the figure of the state of Texas and an Armadillo. It came with a wooden base. I got a rusty hammer-hatchet in my first BOC. It broke the beer thermos that came with it, but I'm using the bag it came with to this very day; literally, I use it for tools and was searching through it this morning for some super glue.
@PocketBrain The last three BOC's that I got from woot costs $3 + $5 s/h, total $8 each and I got around $10 of random dollar store crap that I don't want. If given the option to buy another one, I would pass and let someone else have it. At least with my FUKU, the cow cup alone was worth it. "Cow are you today?" "This is the best coffee heffer."
@PocketBrain Completely agree. The only worthwhile BoC's I've seen in quite some time were for the anniversary. We had two, one included a pretty nice self winding Timex watch (with a MSRP of $185) and the other had a pair of polarized Gant sunglasses that retailed at $110. Obviously neither were selling for close to those prices at the time but at least they had some real value.
To be honest, I still enjoy the conversational tone over at Deals.woot more than here, however sadly it's flagged. ATC was a place where we had all kinds of conversations and people asked for help on all kinds of matters. There was always someone willing to try to help. It had an upbeat tone. Meh works hard to live up to its name, and the cynical, ironic, downbeat tone just isn't as appealing to me. A lot of the conversations I really enjoyed on ATC would go over like a lead balloon here. I keep both meh forum and atc open on my office computer and watch for conversations of interest on both. I hadn't bought anything from Woot for a very long time, but they sent me a coupon yesterday which piqued my interest and I actually found a silverware set that was pretty much exactly what I'd been hunting for the holidays, and threw in a personal ice-cream maker and a couple of pairs of house slippers. Today I bought two car emergency kits here on meh. So I am still pretty active on both sites.
@moondrake Did they say why they sent a coupon to you specifically? Jumbowoot used to send them out for participation in the forums, having the most upvotes for the month, most posts, etc. It was a random criteria every month but now nobody seems to know why someone would get a coupon over another person.
@moondrake I always felt like Deals.woot was just the poor man's Slickdeals. Possibly because most of the items listed there were either on Slickdeals or Fat Wallet first. It kind of pissed me off that people were getting credit for simply reposting deals from other sites all the time.
@Cinoclav Hey. Some of us hunted up our own deals. Every once in awhile I still do.
@moondrake I agree with you: I "clicked" best on the Deals subdomain of woot. I also searched for my own awesome deals (I don't use SD or FW) and found a fun sense of accomplishment if even one other member said they used it. :)
I feel like the Meh forums are a game of double dutch I can't quite figure out how to jump into. It's not as conducive to intermittent participation. I was pretty active in ATC, though. Maybe the difference was simply free time/workload...
@Perkalicious I 'm not all that industrious. Most of the deals I post are for businesses I frequent and am on the mailing list for, so I just share whatever great deals they send me notice of. Every once in a while I'd stumble over something cool while shopping but not often. However, I found many of the deals posted to be useful, I bought many more user-sourced deals than Woot deals.
@moondrake mine were typically deals I was shopping for too, or deals I came across in doing my own shopping. Mine often required a combination of promo codes and promotions too, which always made me feel Extreme-Couponers status. ;) I also tended to prefer the user-submitted deals.
@moondrake Likewise. In the busier times of deals.woot, I bought a good number of the user-posted items. The only sponsor I bought was PTel; the subsequent times scammers sponsored a "deal" really turned me off from trusting them any more.
It was a reminder email for the FALLWOOT10 coupon. I'd missed getting it when it was sent, my mailbox is crazy out of control and I miss a lot of stuff. The coupon brought the silverware set down to the same price as the less satisfactory ones I was watching on EBay so I went for it.
@moondrake If anything, I find deals.woot even sadder than the main Woot. Woot itself has become just another shopping site, sort of extension of Amazon's gold box deals page. Nobody can claim it's what it once was, but there IS the occasional decent deal, BOC, cute shirt design, or bit of amusing content. It's not fantastic, but it is what it is.
Deals.woot, on the other hand, is a barren wasteland of spam and ennui. Stale discussions sit in the "fresh" tab for days with only a few answers from the same handful of 5 or so people who still go there, a pitiful parody of a once-vibrant and fun community. It's sad. It's like going back to a theme park you loved as a kid only to realise that not only is it abandoned and wrecked but there's a few people still sitting on the rides going "Whee!" as though nothing happened, ignoring the rust and kudzu all around them, content in their madness, reality having long since taken flight. It's like the Carl Tanzler of websites.
@Starblind Maybe those few people know the place is wrecked, but stick around picking up litter and working on the rides in the hopes that it can one day become awesome again. I do not easily relinquish that which I once found of value. I'd rather restore than discard.
@Starblind Plus 1 for the twisted Carl Tanzler reference. Though I may suggest reversing the roles as it seems woot has more closely died the sad death of Elena de Hoyos. They're just fortunate there's enough Carls around to continue kicking the corpse...
@moondrake But, speaking honestly and realistically, what do you think the chances are of bringing deals.woot back to the days of, say, 2009? And even if it's possible to do so, why go about it in a manner that so far hasn't produced results? It's clear that the staff is indifferent (at best) to deals.woot and whatever efforts the remaining community has tried to revitalise the place aren't working. I'm reminded of the oft-said cliche that "insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results".
@Starblind Better with me trying than without.
@Starblind I still stop in. I don't post much anymore. Yes, it is, for the most part, a barren wasteland. It would take a huge effort by the staff to bring it back. I recently posted over there, that Woot! posted a special secret deals link on "Brad's " deal site. That to me speaks volumes of their interest in their own deals. That said. Those who are there are nice folks. I like to chat with them when there is a post.
About the only woot subsite I still hang around is shirt, mainly for the art/artists. The current "mutant" Anvil blanks are even worse than the waistline-for-a-neckhole Anvils, and all the print issues and dealing with customer dis-service ... UGH!
The best customer service is the one that rarely, or never, needs to be contacted.
@narfcake I caved recently for the Lord of the Rings boxing design, and I got a size bigger than usual in an attempt to avoid the pinched armpits. It worked, but of course the design is off-center. I'm not even going to bother with customer service. Also, the material is very light and will probably be see-through a few washes down the line. At this point I wouldn't dare buy a woot shirt as a gift for anyone.
@darksaber99999 As much as they suck nowadays since their CS got outsourced, it's still worth a shot via the support page. As for the blank itself - yeah, I kvetch about them a lot, but so long as your shirt didn't already come with loose seams or holes (both of which I have experienced multiple times), the fabric is okay. I have some Anvils that aren't well cared for at all (sub-$1 thrift store finds), and other than being 3" shorter with a neckhole at least 3" too wide, they're not swiss cheese. These aren't Threadless shirts, so.
@narfcake I'm in the same boat. I keep looking at shirt.woot but the rare times I see a design that I would wear, I remember my recent purchases arrived on mutant blanks and are unwearable. To put it in perspective, I haven't used my crate coupon because I'm not sure another mutant shirt is even worth the $5.41 net.
@nadroj Buy a sweatshirt or a hoodie from one of the side sales instead.
@narfcake It's a thought but none of the current hoodies on offer inspire me. I guess I have until Saturday for inspiration to strike. :)
@moondrake It makes me a little sad to hear that you don't think we can have conversational topics here. I'd like to think that underneath all of our cynicism and irony we have hearts of at least silver. Our meh attitude is always aimed at the products we sell, not the community.
I think some of our best threads were fairly conversational. I loved @carl669’s classic are you dumber than me? thread, @bluedyn’s original Fuck It Friday had a lot of good stories. There’s been good, spirited, debate around leaf blowers, reclining on an airplane, and fried foods.
Online communities thrive when people feel personal connections to other members, it’s one of the ways to cut down on this:
and I want to encourage the kinds of topics and conversations that build and grow that sense of actually knowing these people. I support you posting those kinds of topics here, maybe the community will surprise you.
@JonT There have been several times since meh got up and rolling that I had a conversation I wanted to start. I weighed the topic and ended up posting it to ATC, even though I knew there would be only a handful of people to discuss it there, because I felt like that handful of people would be interested. I've started a few conversations here as well, but been a lot less certain how well the subjects would be received, or if people would think they were appropriate. I can't really articulate how I feel differently about the sites without making it seem like I am dissing meh, which I am not. There's just a tonal difference, and not just because ATC is on a respirator. I have lots of fun posting and viewing pics and smart-ass remarks here, don't get me wrong. But it mostly feels like a fast-food conversational diet if that makes any kind of sense. I'm hungry for meatier fare. There have been more in-depth discussions here, and it seems like more lately than before so maybe it's just a growth thing. I'm not going anywhere, I am certainly in for the long haul with meh. But I am with ATC as well, and I don't really think sticking with something when it starts to suck is all that pathetic. People who are fans even when their teams are losing are the true fans.
@moondrake that last sentence makes me think of Cubs fans. (which i am)
@moondrake one of the main arguments in favor of sticking with a community that was once vibrant is that when a large community becomes smaller, the folks remaining are the most appreciative of the values. Kudos for you for defending this and feeling good about it.
@snapster Thanks! I'm sure you have pretty complicated feelings about the continued success or failure of Woot. On one hand, it was your brainchild and you want it to thrive. On the other hand, when you leave a project and it collapses behind you it can make you feel pretty darned important and powerful. I have felt that way about clubs and endeavors I had a hand in building.
I feel like I got tricked. I came in here to discuss crossword puzzles.
LOL. About CWs in general or Woot's in specific? I saw the link for it but decided I wasn't interested and didn't click through. When I clicked on this thread I actually expected it was someone sharing all the answers so mehricans could bogart the contest.
i still frequent woot but it's more for the food items - i'm a cheesehead (excluding igourmet cheeses) and a chocoholic. check wine.woot and home.woot every day, hoping against hope that i'll be able to feed one of my two addictions. the other .woot offerings aren't so important to me anymore.
@annwat On the rare occasion I've seen something on wine.woot that I've wanted, reality hits me that they won't ship to Pennsylvania thanks to our antiquated liquor laws and state stores.
@Cinoclav I wouldn't buy anything from wine.woot simply because it requires Amazon payments.
Member over there since 2004.
I still visit daily, but not always at 12:00am and I don't feel bad if I miss a day or more. I buy just a few times a year (at most), but not at all like before it changed hands. It's like being married for decades; I still love her but don't make love as much...and we certainly don't waste time doing crossword puzzles together!
If I have to do actual work to get a BOC then it is automatically not worth it.
I still frequent both sites. I did get a BOC in the Crapword 3, but I enjoy frequenting the forums because some people in there are really fun. All in all are the deals as good as they used to be? No way...but still some reasonable deals to be had for internet shopping. I do miss the simplicity, hence why I love Meh!
Just recently, say in the past month I have stopped checking in on deals. I agree that the conversation is rather 'stale' compared to what it used to be..... Also, I confess I havenot been hanging around here as much.
My life has become a little crazy recently.