Wanted: Your Weirdo Backstory
19You might be cooler than us. There we said it. But we’d still like to have you prove it.
Respond below with a one or two sentence explanation about how you came to be unironically commenting on Meh.com forum posts and you could be selected for an in-depth interview shared here on the site.
(Before you ask, yes we’ll do it via email and no you don’t have to actually talk to anybody. Also this is pretty casual, so don’t worry about wasting much of your time or needing to think up especially good answers–we’ll take care of making you look cool.)
So who’s in?
- 39 comments, 89 replies
- Comment
I’ll play, even though I don’t count as a staff member.
I was a shirt.woot and deals.woot forum member and when I heard @snapster was starting a new mediocre venture, I snagged my username and started harassing folks in the mediocre.com/forum.
TLDR: woot! fangirl turned mediocre.
@Thumperchick that’s a real heads up play securing the username…
@jouest @Thumperchick I grabbed a different username but it was too close to another poster so I asked if I could change it. @shawn was sweet and posted a link
A friend of mine had urged me to look at the old woot, and mentioned the randomness of the BOCs, but that wasn’t enough. Then came PastaDrop, whose existence I found preposterous, and then one day somebody flagged a daily item I wanted, and I found the forum; the rest is a continuing embarrassment.
@werehatrack PastaDrop brings us all together
@jouest @werehatrack just had some tonight. I did think about checking the best before but that doesn’t seem to be a thing here
@ergomeh @jouest I inherited some no-shit-really thirty year old elbow macaroni a while back, and just for S&G (not the singer duo), I cooked up a batch.
Nontoxic, even more meh than it had probably been to begin with, took for-fecking-ever to get to al dente. I decided that it was too much work, pounded some to bits and offered it to some chickens and had it get disdained. The rest became mulch. Even the mold ignored it for the first several months.
@ergomeh @jouest @werehatrack best before dates are bullshit. I mean yes oil/fat can go rancid. I.e. Oxidize. But dry/canned goods are usually fine.
Obviously if you intentionally mean to store it for 30 years. That’s different. Mylar bag and oxygen remover
@ergomeh @jouest @unksol These were canned, and allegedly used a nitrogen fill for the cavity, yet they were still not exactly food anymore.
@ergomeh @jouest @werehatrack wonder what happened there. Then again no one wants to have to use it.
I was more thinking standard canned goods. Like that tin of beens said 2018… But it’s gonna be fine if it doesn’t smell weird
@ergomeh @jouest @unksol @werehatrack
Canned macaroni?! Weird! I once tried cooking some beans (adzuki, in a plastic bag) that were about 10 years old. They would not get soft! I soaked them and simmered them a really long time, and never could get them soft enough to be good. They didn’t have much flavor either. So they weren’t dangerous, just not worth eating.
@ergomeh @jouest @Kyeh @werehatrack may not be worth eating till your hungry enough.
@ergomeh @jouest @unksol @werehatrack
I’m sure in a dire emergency they’d get eaten, but even though I ignore best-by-dates all the time, I recently read some things about mold that made me think I need to be a little more cautious. I’ve mostly been aware of bacterial hazards, but evidently molds can grow in dry startchy things and cause cumulative problems for your liver and kidneys.
@ergomeh @jouest @Kyeh @werehatrack I don’t think id casually dip into a 30 year old can of anything. But if we were in a bunker meh.
@jouest @Kyeh @unksol @werehatrack Anasazi beans were grown from beans found in a ancient native American dwelling. Some hundreds of years old and the still sprouted. Not sure anyone tried eating them…
@ergomeh @jouest @unksol @werehatrack
That’s cool … I don’t know if commercially sold beans get some sort of processing before being bagged, but maybe I should have tried planting some of the ones I had.
@jouest @Kyeh @unksol @werehatrack also, y’all should have bought the Ninja pressure cooker/air fryer when it was here. Great way to cook beans and will turn pasta to mush in no time flat.
@ergomeh @jouest @unksol @werehatrack Oh, I had one already before they sold them here. But not before I tried those beans. I did get my sister to buy the Ninja Foodi here when they first offered it. That was her one and only Meh purchase!
@ergomeh @jouest @Kyeh @werehatrack I definitely sprouted commercially sold beans. Like from the grocery store. Did not try and grow them.
It was basically the worst 9th grade forced science project ever. Where you were forced to make a three piece poster board and presentation to the class. So public speaking forced into your science class. Make something up to meet the requirements.
I put some beans in a wet paper towel in sunlight. And some in the basement in the dark with a florescent bulb.
They of course sprouted the same because they do that in wet dirt. In the dark. Then may grow toward the light. Like any plant. But that wasn’t part of it. think I florescent bulb may have been involved. I got a lecture but I DID NOT. Want to do it.
Anyway you can sprout most dried legumes/grains if intact. Normally it’s not to grow them though.
They should grow. If they are self pollinating might be fine? Might also produce less than expected cause they were designed for specific conditions.
@ergomeh @jouest @Kyeh @unksol some places get produce and other raw ag products that have been irradiated in transit to control exotic pest intrusion. My father tried growing seeds from orange Bell peppers several times with no success, because he didn’t know that nearly all of the fresh produce sold in Miami was being irradiated before it got there. I don’t know if that was also done to dried beans.
@ergomeh @jouest @Kyeh @werehatrack that would probably do it lol. If you can’t get them to sprout pretty quickly you probably have a dead batch. I think we got a few apple seeds going when we were kids. Not knowing that that’s not the correct way to get an apple tree cause you’ll most likely get trash apples. But they never made it out of the pots anyway
I honestly can’t remember how I found woot, but I did. I watched it grow and fell in love with gourmet.woot. I still miss it. I discovered so many awesome products, many I still use, and companies I have watched grow to be actual powerhouses in their industries.
When @snapster sold out to Amastupid, I scrambled my email and information and never went back for years and years
And somehow I found out about meh, again, no clue how, but it had been up and running for a bit. Been here way to long, LOL. I lurk more than comment, but find some of you amusing. I don’t have a farsebook account, nor do I use musk’s folly, although I have had an account there, but only used it once or twice
And here I am.
VAN MURALS! GROUND SQUIRRELS! SPIT CURLS! AWESOME!
@Cerridwyn if you ever break up with us, we’re scared of the scathing company name wordplay.
@jouest I also frequently call it Amacrap,
After they’re very serious terms of service f****** from I mean early on in their history I’m pretty sure it was the late 90s early aughts. I did not set foot on their side until I ended up working somewhere that I had to buy stuff from approved companies and they were on the list.
And heck we always do weird s*** with the name here. So what else would be new
I used to shop woot semi-often as stuff caught my interest but I was not a forum participant. When I found out that they got bought out by Amastupid (I’m stealing that, @Cerridwyn) The one and only BOC I obtained was mostly gifted in a holiday white elephant gift package. When asked where I found all this weird shit, the host told me about meh and I haven’t looked back at woot since.
@ironcheftoni is it a bad sign when white elephant gifts are a meaningful chunk of your revenue model?
@ironcheftoni @jouest I hope not. Meh has definitely been a stable source for me, especially IRKs
I was a Woot-er back in the day and would always hit-up dealsdotwoot every evening. One night, there was a mention of Meh and after a bit of research I figured out the details and headed over to create a username and get in on any special sales. Yeah, knives, speaker docks, etc lol.
At some point I found the forum and liked a number of posts, but didn’t say much. One member (@mfladd I blame you!!) decided to play Red Rover and called me out. And that’s when all the fun started!!!
I was the forums first Mistress Goat and have the official Doggo of Meh!
So glad I found this site and the folks that come out to play and support each other!!
@tinamarie1974 we also blame @mfladd
@jouest @mfladd @tinamarie1974 Shouldn’t you be blaming
@DLPanther instead?
@DLPanther @jouest @mfladd @xobzoo well, he was a goat. A goat of Meh past…
@DLPanther @jouest @tinamarie1974 @xobzoo
Who has summoned me from my DARK slumber??
And why can’t I add gifs? What witchcraft is this?!
So happy Red Rover brought you out, @tinamarie1974! Glad our dark paths crossed
I read a post on deals.woot and wandered over. I checked out the forums over on mediocre and migrated here. I like the diverse topics and discussions although it has been falling off in recent years. I am a boring lurker so don’t pick me.
@speediedelivery
Sez you!
My username is pretty self-explanatory: I’m an inflatable blow up wolf. I’ve been here for years; some remember me for doing Diesel of the Day and (as the goat) Inflatable of the Day. I’m also very knowledgeable about electronics repair and am happy to give advice on that. Feel free to ask more!
@PooltoyWolf Do you have any pointers on soldering technique? An old Sony calculator is giving me fits!
@ybmuG I don’t think I could give you any specific tips or pointers, other than to try and heat the surfaces and the solder itself enough so they bond correctly. Practice on a junk board you don’t care about!
EDIT: A quality soldering iron is important, as is a clean tip.
@PooltoyWolf @ybmuG I successfully soldered a dozen microchips that were 8 pins each side plus many surface mount components on something I designed/ordered the board. Granted it’s been 2 decades and I doubt my hands are as steady but I don’t recall it being difficult. What exactly is giving you trouble?
There is also the option of baking it in the oven
@PooltoyWolf @unksol primarily it’s the solder grabbing to iron and not the solder point of the contact. I’m trying to reconnect the battery contacts to the board.
@PooltoyWolf @ybmuG what technique are you using? Are you using flux? Ideally you don’t want to apply solder to the iron other than tinning the tip. You want to heat the contacts and apply the solder to them and it will just flow
It’s kind of cool when you get it down.
Also I guess what iron. A temp controlled one with a good tip matterers. There’s old school ones but some interesting new 12v ones I kinda want. The 112V uncontrolled ones are not great
@PooltoyWolf @ybmuG the guage of solder you’re using can also matter
@PooltoyWolf @ybmuG I finally broke down and acquired one of the controlled-temp solder stations that uses a jet of hot air instead of a hot metal tip. For surface-mount devices, it’s a lot less iffy. For wiring, it is as tricky as a regular iron in some respects, but I find it more versatile since it will also apply heat shrink.
I was posting on woot till I stumbled upon Meh, the forums here are more my cynical style and I don’t have to put up with that stupid pal of @narfcake , the flipper mouthed penguin.
I like margaritas.
I feel like disclosing one’s secret backstory in a competition to get to more thoroughly disclose one’s secret backstory is the opposite of how secret backstories are meant to work.
Also?
I’m Batman.
@brainmist Got’em
Came here after woot lost its soul
I mostly lurk and haven’t actually had an account here very long.
I pop in if there’s a joke or pun I can’t resist posting or if tea and coffee topics show up.
@simeon527 coffee?
hmmm
Brother in law posted something about this company that was sending people $20 amazon gift cards to buy things to decorate their new workplace. I went for it. Finally settled on two white rat plushies that actually cost me a few bucks more than the $20. Kickstarter happened. The rest is Meh.
@Pony The Seligman experiment was ridiculously fun. (I think that’s the one you’re referring to.)
It was great to see how many people actually did use their gift card to decorate the office.
@Pony @Thumperchick I wonder how much, if any of that stuff is still around.
I don’t remember.
@warpedrotors Somehow, I’m not surprised
That’s a pretty bold assumption you’ve made.
But while I’m here, I might as well make up something fun:
ₙₒₜₑₛ܄
@xobzoo this is exceedingly well-cited.
@jouest Similar to Red Green, I figure
“If it won’t be well-seen, it should at least be well-cited.”
Dedicated woot and deals.woot participant who followed snapster et al. to a new deal site. Also, I love deals and snark.
Kickstarter backer, 97 orders (plus quite a few over on sidedeal), barely post. I am part of the silent majority! I like to think of this place as the opposite of Cheers for me. A place where nobody knows my name.
@Mac454 !!!mroN
@jouest Bizarro Cheers! Not even the upside down, the sideways world or something more clever.
@Mac454 we know it now.
/giphy muahahaha
@Thumperchick Oh no. I’ve made a terrible mistake…
woot supporter, turned into mediocre kickstarter backer, turned into april 2015 scapegoat for basically telling people to fuck off. i mean, what kind of weirdos like that even?? then bought wayyyyyyy too much/many wine/shirts over at casemates and mediocritee respectively. now, i just hang around waiting for meat sticks and jerky to be sold.
@carl669 I need to find my trophy. I think @puppycat took it for her desk when she stole my old desktop.
@carl669 I was going to send you a “fuck” gif, but that went predictably wrong and had to be deleted while I backed away slowly.
@Thumperchick have you learned nothing? there’s only 2 rules in life:
@carl669 @Thumperchick
@carl669 @Thumperchick @werehatrack I dont know. Im pretty trustworthy!!
@carl669 The rest of us fucking want our trophies! I was goat during the time meh was going to send them? Something? to a meh member who was going to mail them out and then…
/giphy poof
@carl669 Well not what I was looking for but very clever so I left it.
I was walking my dog outside when a spaceship landed in a lawn in front of me. Aliens scrambled out and started eating people. I knew I had to do something, so I threw my dog to them and ran away.
Right at that moment, 1980’s era Mel Gibson (time travel from before it was known he was a racist) drove by in a blue Shelby Mustang convertible and yelled “get in”, so I jumped in the car… and threw him out to the aliens too and kept on driving as fast as I could… at this point the aliens were chasing after me in land speeders pointing imaginary guns at me saying “pew pew” as they pretended to shoot me. I drove around really fast crashing into push-cart fruit stands from 1950’s Italy that had suddenly appeared everywhere- and the old Italian men manning them would gesture angrily to me as I ploughed through their carts. They did not see the aliens coming up behind them and eating them. One by one though the aliens all crashed into low hanging branches on trees and exploded on impact.
Exhausted I stopped into a pub where Obama and George Bush were sharing a beer with each other- literally sharing a beer, it was one glass. I told them about what happened and they both said “meh”. So I took that as a sign and googled Meh… and here I am.
Actually, if I’m honest, the above is all a lie. Really!
My story is boring and mundane as they come. I saw a link on Slickdeals one day, and when I realised it was created by the same people as pre-Amazon woot I stuck around. (I had been a wooter before then). No exciting meh origin story for me.
A loved one pointed me over a decade ago toward shirt.woot, which resulted in me spending WAY more $$ over the years than that person would like. Never scored a BOC. Wandered over here. Continued to spend too much money. Grabbed an Irk or two. Lurker to the forums, little posting. Slipped in on the last Ink for Irk opportunity, so now I post a pic of my freckled forearm every few months.
Well, once upon a time, my father taught his eldest daughter about finding deals on the Internet way back in 2004. There was a myth that you could get a bag of crap for about a dollar plus shipping, of course, he also taught me about torrent sites no more to be said about that.
My dad unfortunately passed away in 2005 and I was to carry-on his legacy of getting a bag of crap. I believe I was able to make his dream come true by getting a BOC in 2007. I continued my pursuit of the elusive BOC until the mothership took over and started to change Woot.
On the Woot forms, I saw this weird site mentioned called meh.com. I discovered they had the FUK now IRK and it was as elusive as the BOC used to be. And I am still here, oh god is this all I’ve done in life? To be continued……
I saw a deal on Cnet’s Cheapskate and came here. I think it was for a printer that lasted me a very long time (it still worked but I gave it to Goodwill because someone left me a better one when they passed on).
I did occasionally go to Woot back in the day, but I never posted in the forums. Something about the Meh button makes me keep coming back (the tiny trash/confetti is a great addition!). Even though I’ve pressed the Meh button 2800+ times, I’ve never pressed it more than 69 days in a row. Heh.
Post my backstory?
Nope. (At least not all at once…)
MacroShit, GoogleyEyes, Homeland inSecurity, et al., already have too much on me. I’m sure any of those would give it all up (for the right price).
@phendrick Forgot to include my shitty & mostly nefarious ISP on that list.
@phendrick we’ll settle for inseam, blood type, and last four of your SSN
@jouest Can I keep all those and just send my adult son instead? (That means I’d still see him about as often as now; he currently lives about 3-4 miles away…)
So, there I was, fishing on Black Lake while the moon was full with my best friend, Curly Jefferson…
@capguncowboy I don’t understand this, so I wish I could give you 2 stars…
@capguncowboy @shahnm https://mightyboosh.fandom.com/wiki/Old_Gregg
Old woot good but sold to breakfast octopuss super villain.
Meh let’s us say fuck.
@unksol And u’se apostrophe’s incorrectly!
@shahnm @unksol Today’s u’se of apostrophe’s on the internet i’s to alert the reader that an 's i’s coming.
@macromeh , And if the Oxford Comma-ists have their way, every instance of the word “, and” will be preceded by a comma forever more. (If this starts to become common, I will propose calling it an Ironfoundersson Comma. Some will understand why.)
@macromeh @werehatrack @shahnm I apologize. I missed a period during my attempt at caveman. Not really my first language.
"Old woot good but sold to breakfast octopuss super villain.
Meh. Let us(let’s ) say fuck."
The dates are a little fuzzy on cave man contractions though. But it could be period correct considering the missed period. Back in the early days the grammer Nazis were all over the place on these things.
@macromeh @unksol @werehatrack Some of us grammar nazis still lurk in the darker corners of otherwise reputable websites…
@macromeh @shahnm @werehatrack lol. I meant “all over the place” on the correct enforcement. The problem being that the wanna be grammer Nazis were often wrong and/or made mistakes of “there” own in their response and had to immediately be corrected by another.
Just for fun let’s see what swype does.
Let’s let’s let’s.
Yea(and there was much rejoicing). I can’t make it do it correctly with out backspacing and manually typing it. It doesn’t even offer the choice, just predicted next words. I’d have expected it to offer the choice and didn’t notice because the actual message is just in peripheral vision for the most part. Because your eyes are tracking the path/finger.
Auto correct is a problem as well as swype. But I’m not letting an AI on my phone so. Meh. Yes you are correct; however, I’m not going to apologize for my mostly correct grammar relative to the rest of the Internet. Or at least the fact that I can form full sentences in an era where we have unlimited text messaging, unlike 2008 where we had SMS.
The age of overages is long over. In 2008 I and a girlfriend accidentally ran her phone bill into I think $200+ because neither of us realized AT&T was going to charge her 5 or 10 cents per SMS. And do it after the fact, with no warning. I think I had unlimited and she just didn’t realize. And just talked to each other.
Now people have regressed into hieroglyphics (I did Google spelling on that one) .
Grammer has also changed some. It is, after all, ever evolving. I’m going to have to agree with the oxford comma as have several legal cases. But also how English was taught at my school in 2000.
“Irregardless”, if you enjoy it, I’ve provided you with plenty to pick at. Some intentional and some not. Incidently where you would not use an oxford common. Not every and needs a friend.
In summary
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m a divorced dad with a special needs kid, and thusly have no life. So of course I’ve been here since almost the beginning.
@haydesigner Hope you are managing OK overall. I know special needs kids can make life tough.
I am and was a single parent of a special needs, needed an incredible amount of supervision to keep her out of trouble, kid I adopted at an older age. She once asked me why I wasn’t married. I told her to date you need to have a life and I don’t have a life. I did not tell her she was the reason why I had no life outside of work. I swear as a teen she needed more “supervision” than when she was younger. It was not a given I’d get her through high school with a diploma, not pregnant and without a criminal record. Fortunately all 3 were accomplished (although she still has significant issues that require more involvement than would be even remotely typical for an adult and also to keep her kids out of social services).
Hi friens!!! WOOF!! I am like an open book, no an open bag of pb treats!!! You get excited when you see me! WOOF!!!
I found this place when I stole my moms phone to order toys and treats!!! Ssshhhh don’t tell!
I didn’t know I would find so many kool people who tell mom to give me belly rubs and PB! I have so many friens and I luv you all! Nose bumps fur all friens!! WOOF!!
I was literally searching on the word “meh” to find a better word for something I was writing and stumbled across the site on July 8, 2019 which, as it happened, was a Meh birthday Meh-rathon. 3 hours later I found myself with nothing to show for my time but membership in some weird site that sells stuff nobody wants and a forum filled with people that buy it…and complain about it. I was strangely home.
BTW - there is no better word.
@ybmuG
can confirm
How I landed here: That story starts before meh. I had bought a few things on woot but wasn’t part of the community and not familiar with it’s history until I was on here. I have started an NGO, an ‘informal’ food bank and a couple of other things where I have made no money but filled needs. A small amount of my some research and also dissertation was about escalation of commitment of venture capitalists (VC) - they fund some startups when they start looking like they might be viable and then make their money selling the company.
My uncle is a VC and a faculty member - he started an entrepreneurship program at a major division one university. Anyway that aforementioned research resulted from a ‘discussion’ we had on the family farm’s front porch. There was also a peanut gallery on the other porch furniture and swings - we were on the porch swing - entering in on occasion (some of those cousins have since started companies, several more than one). I told him I could likely predict whether or not a VC was going to throw good money after bad with a failing startup and what influenced that decision making process. He insisted no one could do that. So we made a bet. I’d get $100 if I “won” (eg did the implied research and got results) and I’d be stuck finding him articles for a masters level course on how to get along with your VC team (hmm must be a problem there
) if I lost. Anyway I won (I found him the articles anyway).
Because of that “academic” and personal background I was drafted in to co-creating an intro to entrepreneurship undergrad class and then co-teaching it because of that (also got a lot of class content advice from my uncle along with a ton of his class notes and slides which was really helpful). I was going to talk about fundraising and Kickstarter to try to raise start up money (VC’s usually step into the picture a bit later than that in their start up process). I wanted to find one that was at a point in time where we could follow it in class. Ran into meh there, read about it, learned about the backstory because of that (I had bought a few things on woot but was not part of the community so had no idea of who snapster was), was on the forum a couple of days after it opened in July, joined a week later… and…well… umm… class ended (I had made them join the forum and they had a short paper assigned based on seeing what was going on that related to either meh as a start up or the community being built to support sales and commitment to the company and it’s word of mouth) and here I still am here years later (must have drunk the koolaid
).
Some of the early threads where snapster would ruminate out loud and bounce off of us different kinds of plans I found interesting from a “thought process of an entrepreneur” point of view (and I miss that he doesn’t do that anymore, but the company has matured and changed somewhat). As an aside: he once posted a solution in search of a problem (that is what I asked him if that is what it was and he answered that it might be) that appears to have, found the problem it was going to solve as that idea eventually, morphed into the original (before the current changes where products can be bought all day if not sold out) mehrathons with respect to for sale for a short period of time and then poof.
I also saw how johnT (and eventually others) built and sustained the meh community and was looking at how they were doing that, what worked and didn’t and incorporated some of that into organizational behavior classes (with respect to organizational culture) where they had to figure out some of the ways he did that looking at specific threads I sent them to with one assignment and also told them to read others too and relate all of that back to course concepts (I am sure that sucked some of them into joining and becoming mehbers).
Early on I stayed partly because of these kinds of things, partly because of the “smart ass” mouth factor, partly because of the fun and games that went on, partly because of developing internet friendships through here, and partly because I am curious about the continued development of this company even though I no longer teach that class. Meh certainly is skilled at sucking people in.
/giphy hats off in respect
@Kidsandliz So we are all part of your unofficial psychology study…?
@Kidsandliz I’m pretty sure that exceeds the two sentences asked for, but I, for one, am glad you did it. This is definitely in the “things I didn’t know would be so interesting” category.
Anyway, if they try to disqualify you for being too long, you could just trim it to your summary sentence:
@xobzoo I don’t care if I am picked or not. That is not why I posted. But certainly that conclusion could be reached.
@shahnm Sure. Why not? No doubt I have a twisted mind.
It’s been interesting though to watch how this company, the forum, the community… has developed and changed over time. And to try to figure out how jonT was so good at creating and maintaining community, what he did to do that… Originally they were a live “case study” to use in class (well in the end two classes as I saw the opportunity for a second one based on the community aspect). Now it is just 
nosinessidle curiosity.@shahnm Ahh but you do have something - a fridge full of battery friends. (the first gif said, “I have nothing”.)
edit - so how many times will you change the gif??
@Kidsandliz Sorry to orphan your reply. Giphy was being a little bitch…
@shahnm Hmm so we are having a conversation in almost real time then. You trying again on the gifs?
I was an occasional poster from the very first day of Woot!. And then I was an occasional poster from the early days of Meh. And then one day Meh put up a poll about refrigerating batteries, and that turned out to be the question I never knew I always needed…
@shahnm ok but what’s your take on refrigerating batteries
@jouest I’m fairly noncommittal - why do you ask?
@jouest @shahnm
/giphy eyeroll
Uh… I got nothing. I don’t remember how I got to be a citizen of meh. I had to have read about it on some deal site. Or those shows that used to have a shopper come on with 4-6 items at 85% off retail, like The Real, would direct you where to go to get the deal. I imagine I followed a deal and ended up at a site like side deal, then discovered meh. I do know what keeps me here. I love a surprise! (Didn’t even find out what sex my child would be until he was born.) There are so few true surprises left in the world that I love getting an irk when I can. Will it be useful or trash or a mixture? Will it be something great that doesn’t work for me? Who knows? Not I. That is why I will check meh.com everyday, yes, even on vacation.
I was sitting in my cube at work back in 2011ish and a cube mate was telling me about this site called woot. I thought he was joshing me because it was a weird name. My first purchase was a case if Mickey Mouse themed band-aids (I had kids) for an unreasonably low price and I was hooked! Eventually I made my way to meh once the conversion happened. I spent years on the site not paying attention to the forum, I think one year I picked up on the birthday celebrations happening, started following the threads, and eventually became an ex-giat and permanently branded.
Ex-giat? I needcto proofread before hitting subkit and then going to sleep. Inkster. I wrote inkster
@mbersiam I thought you were going for “ex-goat” (which you also are).
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@xobzoo
I loved Woot! 1.0. I really did. But Woot! 2.0 not so much. Woot! 2.0 has lost its way, IMHO.
Nevertheless, I still check Meh and Woot! 2.0 every day. All I can say about Woot! 2.0 is Meh. The death of the implied cynical attitude and not taking themselves seriously is long, long gone, and it shows.
Woot! 2.0 corporate weenies and dipsticks replaced a good thing with crass commercialism and is all bidness (that’s Southern for those who don’t have any South in their mouths). No fun. No way,
As a member of the VV set (vanishing vitality, aka old) set, there is little I need except for out of date food items, which may not last much longer than moi. For these I can depend on Meh; Woot! not at all.
OTH, Woot! 2.0 Food and Household has gone off the deep end as for months on seeming months on end, they are hawking perfumes, and other non-essential nostrums. Meh to the meh power, AFAIAC.
I came to Meh slowly, though I was well aware of the original Woot! offering of Tee shirts. Tee shirts were and are not my bag, for I can only wear one at a time, and I am not prone to displaying any cryptic images nor any commercial message of any kind on any that I wear on a regular basis.
I eschew (that means avoid for those who are not up on vocabulary) labels of any kind on my garments be they shoes, shirts, pants, jackets or what have you. If the SOB’s that label such want me to advertise for them, then they can damn well pay me instead of me having to pay them. No Nikes, no alligators, no logos, no shit.
Where was I? I am prone to quaffing an occasional glass of wine (quaffing is a lot like drinking except you spill more). When the Bezos cluster-fuck that replaced Woot! 1.0 discontinued Wine Woot! because they somehow thought that it would interfere with their pathetic Whole Foods offerings, I was dismayed, irritated, chagrined, annoyed, and SOOCW (shit out of cheap wine). There is not a Whole Foods within thirty miles of me and if there was one nearby, I damn well wouldn’t shop there first for vino, you Amazon Corporate dipsticks!
So it came to pass through the open end of an empty wine bottle that I took the plunge and gave some bucks to the GoFundMe startup of Casemates. (And, No, I didn’t tell the SO then or now.) I became a VIP (an involuntary benefit) for which I have been paying ~$6/mo ever since.
I like Casemates, and Meh. Bags o Crap and IRKs have little appeal, as I have a lifetime of accumulated junk and little interest in adding to it. In fact, here’s an idea, Meh, if you want to open a market for old farts and others to create IRKs for distribution, I would be interested.
For truly cheap wine, I find Aldi and Trader Joes to be useful resources. I’m dead certain that most of it would cause a wine snob to give it the side-eye while walking carefully past it at a safe distance upwind, but since most of my uses of wine are in cooking, I really have no clue. (So says the person who actually went on a wine-tasting tour of the Marlborough region of New Zealand.) (IME, there are better wines in the rest of the South Island, and almost none of those ever make it out of the country.)
@werehatrack
Gotta say TJ actually stocks some VERY good wines. Aldi… not so much.
I was a wooter with my own woot off lights and everything, but then it was acquired and started being different. I got a new job and one day the guy I was taking over for somehow mentioned meh and that it was the people that originally started woot, so I joined and bought some cutting boards and a whole lot of shit since then.
@djslack we do get our foot in the door with those cutting boards; it starts with something you might see on QVC and the next thing you know you’re buying a discount rubber horse mask at 3 a.m.
@jouest it’s a duck mask, but yeah
I still use those cutting boards every day. They will have their tenth birthday in a few months.
In 2018 I came from dealnews.com and bought a Martian Smartwatch (that I’ve never used); few days later I noticed these weird emails that kept showing up; after a few more days I discovered that there was a clickable meh button; after a few more days I discovered the user forum where I learned that it was a thing have a long streak of daily button clicks: 2873 clicks later, with a longest streak of 1017, I’m still coming back, although I’m not sure why. There’re not enough cheap drones or earbuds anymore, and too many nearly expired convenience store snacks: and using colons and semicolons makes it possible to put all this in “one or two sentences” as requested.
@algae1221
Way to beat the man!
My weirdo backstory has nothing to do with meh.
I was named after the dog.
@pakopako Indiana?
@jouest @pakopako
surely not THIS one
@chienfou @jouest @pakopako Maybe this one?
I’m an extra in my life story.
@blaineg
Sometimes I feel like an understudy.
Found woot in 2009. Stumbled into the dark dark world of deals.woot irc where I met a few folks who liked to chat about deals and life and everything in between. we hung out everyday and competed to see who could buy the most bocs. We all migrated to meh almost as soon as it was announced and I was early enough to get a better username. Since then I’ve lost track of the irc group outside of the occasional hello here in the forums. Life got a lot busier and I don’t sit at my computer all day anymore.