Your meh story? Here's mine...
23No click-bait here. Just wondering what other people's 'meh stories' are. If this bores you, that means that I'm doing it right, right?!
So I wondered in via a Deal News plug (before this past Christmas) for the quadcopters... I occasionally check DN, usually hoping to find some crazy deal on something, most often something that I don't need. After reading meh's FAQ, I knew that this was a happy place. So, like clockwork, I now make sure to stay up until 11pm CST. If you're reading this, then you know what I mean. I never knew Woot, have since checked it out, and there's too much going on over there... I like meh. 1-a-day. Becoming a VMP was a no-brainer, as I'm sure that I've placed at least a dozen orders since my discovery of this place. Yes, some things are still in the box, and might never be opened by myself, but rather the next person who's birthday might be right around the corner. So there's a look into my meh story... Et tu, Brute?
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Welcome! My story is even more boring and I've been around so long I've forgotten most of it. Just wanted to say I'm glad you stuck around and ventured into the forums!
I'm a wooter who signed up when it was announced that @snapster was going to start another one-item-a-day site ... but with lower expectations.
I am not disappointed at all. It's been almost anything but meh.
(Some stuff sold has been pretty shitty, but at least they're honest in saying that it's shitty.)
@narfcake Same here. Been Mediocre for 895 days.
I was a long-time wooter, and somehow missed that @snapster was starting a new site after amazon ruined it. Then daringfireball.net had a sponsor "meh" and the rest is history.
I was trying to find something for a class I teach and was reading an article about kickstarter, indiegogo, etc., then went to kickstarter to try to find a company to use for an assignment I was designing. Pure chance meh's page came up (didn't use them - sorry meh - but clicked through looking). Had bought around 3 or 4 things on Woot, but none recently and no clue who owned what, the story about either... That was back early July 2014.
I was a long time Woot user. Got a lot of stuff from them that I still use regularly. I pretty much stopped using Woot after the acquisition.
Somehow, I missed the birth of Meh until I saw an ad somewhere (maybe Daring Fireball), late 2014. I signed up and have continued my old habit of buying crap I kinda need but not really.
I recently started buying from Woot again occasionally, but it's pretty joyless over there.
same story as others. former wooter (fine, i still buy stuff very rarely), then found out about the kickstarter. backing it was a no brainer. and, nearly 2 years later, i'm still here. appreciating the fact i can say fuck in these forums and post stupid shit like this:
Welcome to the family!
I am the family member they keep locked up in the basement (or try).
ok. who fucked up and gave @mfladd internet access? heads are gonna roll!
@carl669 You knew it was just a matter of time until I got out again.
@mfladd
@mfladd you locked yourself in the basement and you know it.
@katylava I will admit to nothing.
(plus, there will always be a GoaT to blame)
@carl669 Damn it you guys, who let @mfladd out? I will never give you the key to the lock again.
@jaremelz Damn, that gif gave me the chills.... Fine movie though.
@placeholder Then my work here is done. :)
@mfladd I think maybe @jaremelz is falling down on the job if you escaped... either that or was bored.
I remember the great joy I felt in the summer of 2004 when I discovered woot and that robot lawnmower. I didn't need that thing though, since I was living in a place that had no grass. I didn't need anything until Christmas Eve 2004, when the Lego NBA Build-a-Brawl set caught my eye. I still own that set, and the little NBA players get to hang out with Lego skeletons and explorers and all kinds of other fun friends.
woot was fun for a while, then it wasn't, so I've been mostly lurking around meh since July 2014. I like the write-ups and the corny videos more than I actually like buying the stuff that's for sale. Except the coffee tumblers. I buy more of those than I really need.
I'm an id10t. Sez it all.
Like many others I wooted. It started during college(guessing 2005). My lab partner told me of this thing called a woot! off and bags of crap. I remember staying up and stalking those. I have a box of woot! Monkeys to prove it.
And somewhere on the internets/woot there is a pic of my cat in a green giant woot monkey cape. I would like to clarify that I'm completely against this sort of thing normally. But a woot dog owner started it and said you couldn't get a cat in one cause they weren't chill enough. Then a mod was taking bets. Couldn't let that stand and my cat was totally chill.
Anyway woot sold to Amazon. Amazon said nothing would change. Then everything changed. Then it changed more. Then more. Then the forum censoring broke the community and I said so long.
Unfortunately I missed the meh kick starter, but heard about it after on some tech site news and shared with friends. We all enjoy the original woot spirit. And the... Erm... "Unique" community. The forums are fun to read even if you're usually not interested in directly engaging.
And I very much appreciate the complete fucking lack of fucking censorship that fucking finally fucking drove me away from fucking woot!
@unksol I didn't find a cat with a green cape but here's a cat with a red cape:
http://www.woot.com/forums/viewpost.aspx?postid=3783688
@narfcake I had to get off the phone and on the computer to find it. He looks a little agitated but this was probably the 15th attempt to get one with the cap sitting up instead of just laid back. He was all chill with the cape but not the posing/pics/cap on ears....
(I am not remembering how to get it to display natively if someone wants to fix the link)
http://imagecache.w00t.com/?url=http://i51.tinypic.com/2mgw1s0.jpg
And here is the thread.
http://www.woot.com/Forums/viewpost.aspx?postid=4595958&pageindex=5#post4596197
As I said I would not normally... But there was a dog dare. Someone also responded with a parrot.
@narfcake
secondary one of him after his "sister" to test imgur
Can't remember how I got here, am glad I did. Bought maybe one thing from Woot.
Decided that I'd save $ by becoming a VMP, but now I realize "It's a trap"! I have avoided speaker docks and blue tooth speakers, but you had me at mini-copters.
@transplant Did Ackbar tell you too?!?! Man. That guy. He's all over that trap business. I think he should open his own shop.
I'm a Wooter who became a Mediocre lab rat very early on. Did the Kickstarter thing and scored the first Fukubukuro and the Day 1 t-shirt. It's been a fun ride and I look forward to wasting more money on crap I don't need.
@Teripie basically this is me too.
except it's all my brother's fault.(he's here somewhere, but i still don't know his username)
my brother lives down in DFW, had read an article in some local press about this cool, funky little tech start up, and became a devotee, and when he came home to NW Buckeyeland for Christmas, told his idiot kid brother about it who was nearly instantly addicted to the site...That was Woot, in 2005....
forget how i found out about mediocre, but signed up as a lab rat , then got the seligman invite, then out of the blue in my inbox one day was this cute video of a troll singing about "kickstarting"
I donated, got the fuku, bought 2 of the day Zero kickstarter backer shirts. one for me, one for my brother. Told him about meh, and now he's got a fun little side business reselling stuff he buys from meh to his cubefarm compatriots.(though for some reason he won't call it meh, always m-e-h...)
I was a Deals.Woot-izen for a while and participated in some fun and lively discussions there....to the detriment of my day job.
So I took a hiatus for a while. Things at work started to slow down, and so I started looking on Deals.Woot again to see what I missed. Judging by the cobwebs and dust on that page, I missed everything.
While I was aware of Mediocre Labs, I hadn't made the connection between Mediocre and AnythingUseful. I decided to look for the only username I could remember at the time (using the magic of the Google) @Capguncowboy to find out where everybody went. That led me here.
It's been mostly knives, speakerdocks, and goat GIFs since then.
@lumpthar I'm glad you made it over and even more happy to know that I helped you find Meh.
It really is mostly speaker docks and goat gifs.
:)
@lumpthar Using @capguncowboy as your spirit guide worries me. :) I'm glad you found your way here.
Husband introduced me to woot, via his closet of great shirts and the Dyson that we're still using 8+ years later. Heard about @snapster starting up mediocre.com via twitter, became a fearless leader rat, kickstarted meh, pestered you all with gifs.
@Thumperchick Enough about you, we need baby pictures, please.
I came, I saw, I purpled.
@Barney Veni, vidi, purpuri.
@carl669 Ahh... You speak purple!
Longtime wooter, but had dwindled to occasional user there. Somebody's comment on one of their boards on Nov 13th 2014 led me to meh.com, right at midnight, so I scored Fukubukuro 3 immediately after I registered on the site. It was quite a shock, and I've been here ever since.
@OldCatLady Wow! That is a very cool story.
Long time wooter. Daughter introduced me to it. I probably bought more from wine.woot (back in the day it was really food.woot too (cheese, coffee, fine chocolates, decadent stuff) and t-shits (one I have 2 of even, long story). Despise Amacrap for very personal reasons and stopped buying and even scrambled my account when they sold it. I actually sobbed on the forums I think.
Didn't know about this place until i literally fell over it. Was so excited. So no kickstarter. Never got a fuku, came close once. But then never bought a bag of crap either.
Community is way cool even if a bit out there sometimes. but then we all have our vices.
This is my MEH story...
Whenever anyone asks my youngest son a question he always says "meh"...Alex what do you want for dinner..."meh"....how did you like the movie ..."meh"...it became a family joke. One day my older son stumbled across a shirt that had MEH written on it while thrift store shopping....he bought it for me as a joke. I wore this shirt while on vacation and we went shopping at Cabellas. My Son was looking at stainless steel drink bottles and I was bitching about not paying $17 for drink bottles...A random man asked if I saw the ones on Meh. I had no clue what he was talking about. He asked about my shirt and I explained my funny story...then he explained that it was an actual website and that I should check it out...well I checked it out...and it was Tuesday and I got 2 great Bubba bottles for $12 + $5...and now I am officially addicted to MEH...thanks to the random man at Cabellas and all the great crap on MEH...that you don't know you need until you buy it!
@sweetjoey great story! but I'm a little sad the person didn't give you the official(ish) breakfast octopus hand gesture:
@carl669 Do we have to do the whole leaning in at the end thing? 'Cause that part is just damn creepy.
@Pavlov i suppose it depends on the distance from the other Mehrican. especially if the other mehrican happens to be:
Started with Woot very close to the beginning, 2004. Not only was there just one item, there was just one forum. (And, Barney, it was purple.) That all changed but it still held at one item for a long time. Made a lot of friends there, several of whom I've met personally. Snapster used to occasionally post on Woot so I knew who he was and followed him on Twitter. So when he posted there about a new site called Meh, it was like "hot damn," here we go. My first or second fuku, got a note and a key. Practically hyperventilated. Even more so when a freight company needed my address. They sent me a giant bubblegum machine, over five feet high. I had a lot of fun with it and the grandkids loved it. Finally found somebody to buy it. Still hoping for another note.
@pooflady I love purple.
Was a long time Wooter, several Dysons, Espresso Machine, monkeys, funny shirts, several Bags of Crap, hundreds of woots and many thousands of dollars spent. Then came Amazon, and they stopped giving a shit about the long term, regular, customers.
Quite upset with what Woot had become, and their response to the community, I boycotted it, and started editing all my posts and removing all my value-add tech info from all my message history until they figured it out. Then came that damn tiled interface with hundreds of pieces of shit for sale across 10 sites and I stopped checking it completely.
Ironically, At some point, missing limited time 'deals', I started checking Amazon Lightning Deals (Which are mostly just pricing stunts)
But I'm happy that Meh is back to basics, happy to be a VMP, and bought a ton of quad copters, plus a few more Dysons. I don't have anywhere near the dedication to participate in the community as much as some of the regulars, nor can I decipher all the cryptic relationships, personal names, and back stories, but occasionally I'll bite and post my thoughts to the group!
@caffeineguy They stopped you from being able to edit your own thoughts/comments? How Big Brother of them.
Did anyone else come here after the big 'School Crate' snafu of 2014?
I came to Meh through Woot, following one of the (at the time) biggest blunders of Woot CS. The story is rather long, but the takeaway is that Woot dropped the ball on handling a group of frustrated customers in September of 2014. I had not been a regular for some time and was already frustrated with the changing community and deals and the seemingly impossible BOCs, so this was easily the last straw for me.
During the rather lengthy forum discussion regarding this particular previously-mentioned issue, someone mentioned the Meh project. There were many others at the time that said they'd be making the change and leaving Woot... I wonder how many are still around and how many have not gone back? As for myself, I made the switch and haven't looked back.
@placeholder I was one of the few "sastisfied" school crate buyers. I got $24.99 value in the $25+ I paid as both the lunch box and shirt were designs I like.
The bigger turnoffs have been the other junk - the BOCs looking like dollar store rejects, the NFL mystery boxes, the electronic boxes, the deals.woot "sponsored" shit, etc.
@narfcake To look back on that event, I would say that I was fairly satisfied with what I got (although they sent me a shirt a couple sizes too small and gave me a partial refund in lieu of replacing it).
No one should have expected a BOC "value", but that there was no discernible discount on items that we could not choose was a bit of a problem to me. The fluctuating coupon value really drove the last nail in the coffin.
I was a long time (silent) wooter, who joined the kickstarter after seeing it on the forum. I later got in on the $20 amazon gift card to a) help the office decorate or b) keep for myself, and made the terrible decision to spend it on exciting and tasteful items for the mediocre offices. I currently pass through the forums everyday waiting for another $20 amazon opportunity so I can make a better decision (i.e., take that $20 and RUN!). They can't outsmart me twice.
Yup, this is my Meh story too.
I started a new job in October 2014 and the guy that was training me happened to mention that the same people that started Woot had started a new site called Meh. So here I am. Was a long time wooter, mostly prior to Amazon.
I had been a devoted wooter for 10 years, with the original purple t-shirt and a bazillion flying monkeys.
The sale to Amazon changed woot in worse ways than even the color change. Gone were Brave Girl and the Grand Wootarian.
The big 'School Crate' snafu of 2014 was the last straw. I probably found meh in the same forum where we all howled so operatically in our fury.
I turned my back on woot with no regrets.
@mamawoot I love purple.
@mamawoot Brave Woman
What was the "School Crate" snafu? Is there a link somewhere that I can look at?
@Teripie http://shirt.woot.com/forums/viewpost.aspx?postid=5978616
@narfcake Thanks for the link. Thankfully that bullshit went down after I left Woot. Reading a bunch of those posts mad me mad enough that I wanted to complain about those crates as well.
It's cold and scary at Woot, while it's ever so cozy here.
@Teripie The subsequent Holiday and Valentine's crates were not well received either.
The current shirt-of-the-month-club seem better in that the upcoming artists are announced and the higher pricing has deterred the "I-expect-everything-for-next-to-nothing" wooters.
@narfcake I guess it's kinda good that I only bought 2 stuff from Woot ever, (and never participated in the forums there). Naturally, both times I regretted my purchases.
@FroodyFrog What I've learned about woot (which extends to meh) is that one has to temper their expectations. Stuff may indeed be shitty, so are the cons worth it? Here, where there is a significant price differential, yes. At woot, where stuff can be priced higher than on Amazon, no.
The AA shirts are still a bargain with the surcharge; the standard Anvil, not so much.
@narfcake Wonderfully put, good sir.
@narfcake The only way Meh could lower my expectations of them would be if they make the fatal flaw of deciding to sell numerous "One deal a day" deals. It's the reason why I stopped going to a bunch of sites.
@Teripie I'm not sure that "cozy" is the correct word, what with @snapster's tentacles wrapping around everything. "Snug" would work.
That warmth you're feeling is the blood spilling from the newest users.
kinja.deals.com brought me here, I don't remember what it was for. The fact that the creator of this site was the creator of woot intrigued me, as I was with woot shortly after they started.
I also was a long time Wooter - still have many flying monkeys and some usb Woot lights from the one and only bag of crap I managed to get. Oh the many nights spent hoping for a BOC - but slow small town DSL could never load that page fast enough. I have purchased a few things since amazon took over, vacuum, bakeware, etc. but no longer check in nightly. I found my way here from @cheapskate and was so excited to find out it was the missing woot peeps. VMP? Hell yes!
i like to watch, eve
@mmlivezey being there, that's what Meh. is all about chancey
Oh gods, your misapplication of "et tu, Brute" bothers me waaaaaaaay more than it should. Like unclosed quotes or parentheses brackets, it's nail-scratching the chalkboards inside my head. AUGUUUGHHH, THE POST DOESN'T FIT THE QUOTE, MAN.
Anyway:
I wooted. This kickstarted. I supported. I lurk. I, rarely, buy travel mugs or tshirts. In occasional moments of character weakness I click "say it" instead of pressing delete.
I suckered them in to paying me to hang out here. So much better than when I had to pay people to be my friends in college.
Used to woot, now I meh. Long live the impulse buy!
I was working for Amazon, my coworker who was in Va moved down to Texas to do some "support" for the Woot offices. (Couldn't really ask him what though)
I some vague conversations between my boss and him about something falling through, trying to find new offices, and I think woot eventually being managed in Seattle.
Then I saw Mediocre and them announcing meh. I liked the idea of an Amazon employee backing the project, so I jumped in.
I also watched Woot from 2004, so I wanted to see if it would be something similar. Liked the idea of the one-day deal coming back.
Like many others, I was a semi-fanatical wooter until I was laid off in 2011 and had to shut down all the spending. By the time I got my head above water financially, I had no clue meh existed until I saw someone mention it in the woot forums. (I lurk but almost never post, and I'm questioning why I'm even doing this now. I never have anything to say)
My story is very mediocre, so I really feel a sense of belonging here.
@whammy no whammies, no whammies, STOP!
(sorry... i had to do it)
@carl669 I had no idea this was even a thing until a few months ago when I made a Press Your Luck reference and someone told me about it.
So on the chance you haven't seen it, I'm paying this fo[u]nt of useless game show knowledge forward (there's a whole documentary about it):
The Press Your Luck Scandal
at one point i tried to sum up how much money i spent on woot. it was probably nearly $10k. when Amazon came in, "deals" were few and far..
Anyone remembers POPE HAT product launches? or Yahoo Shopping deal when they sold $1 crappy gadgets for a week? those were the days...
i wonder when was the last time they did this:
I just keep showing up hoping for cookies. It's never cookies.
@MrMark sometimes it is
@MrMark Perhaps no cookies, but there are treats.
@carl669 Ha. It makes me happy that someone got cookies.