And so, the Signal vs Noise debate rumbles on – a company who’ve been mildly successful with some intriguing and OK products and who up until fairly recently were well respected in the design/dev blogosphere decided to play the ‘holier than thou’ card when tagged with the ‘four things’ meme.
For the uninitiated, a ‘meme’ is like a viral game, comprised of a series of questions that is passed from blogger to blogger. They’re far from the be all and end all of the blogosphere and being tagged can induce feelings of ‘do I _have_ to?’ but at the end of the day, its just a bit of fun. If you don’t want to participate and you get tagged all you have to do is simply not post your answer. No one cares, no one gets hurt and the meme rolls on regardless.
The ‘four things’ meme is a series of questions about four things e.g. name four jobs you’ve had, four movies you could watch again and again. Utter bullshit stuff for sure and about as important as a wet fart but still, mildly interesting on occasion when the meme lands on the blog of someone you know or someone you admire but don’t know.
So what was 37signals response to all this?
The listed each question with ‘pass’ written into each answer, making it totally clear they felt the whole thing beneath them. A few choice comments were left, particularly this one from Matthew Oliphant:
This is what I take away from this post: “I hope people stop writing what they want to write about on their own blogs and write only about things I find interesting.”.
Realising that they’d pissed a few people off, the 37signals guys decided to invent a whole new meme (one supposes as some sort of ‘reward’ for us peons), entitling the post A meme worth spreading.
Great name. As Jon Hicks commented with masterful sarcasm:
Pass. I bow to your far superior meme creation techniques.
Jon went on to elaborate:
You know how I said that one of my concerns for 2006, was that blogging amongst the design community was becoming too serious and worthy? Well there we go…..After all if you can’t arse around on your blog, where can you? C’mon!
In that spirit of arsing around, I offer my own thoughts to the debate – during an idle surf I stumbled across what looked like an intruiging product. I dutifully took a screen capture which you can see here.
Please watch this space for details of my soon-to-be-upcoming court appearance.
Left Brain Right Brain 
*sniff* Nobody ever tags me. Okay, so only like five people read my blog (any of my blogs) regularly, that’s not the point. I want to be self-important and piss people off, too! *looks dejected*
Brilliant! 😀
Absolutely brilliant. Thanks! 😀
You got it spot on! 😀
ROFL! brilliant!
You definitely nailed it! 😀
Absolutely spot on…and a lesson for an awful lot of people out there!
Haha, mildly successful. I wish I were making the mildly successful money that the mildly successful Jason Fried rakes in 😉
FYI: I don’t think 90% of our former readership is beneath me. 75% tops. ; )
Who’s == Who Is
Whose == Possessive word.
I like the poster 😉
kudos kev, seems you hit a note over at 37s too 🙂 good work.
If u care to read my thoughts about the hubbub, here’s a response I posted elsewhere.
This is exactly why I hate the ‘blogosphere’ – some people basking in thier self-importance. They become experts on _every_ freaking thing.
Internet arrogance is what I call it.
I like 37signals products, but I give the props to DHH and his vision of RoR which made these products succesful.
I don’t hate 37s for becoming a succesful small biz though, more power to them!
…and everyone took it in the spirit it was intended. Thats good. My faith in human nature is restored ;o)
Next week – Molly: Should Girls Really Be Allowed To Do Web Stuff?
Youve been featured in their blog
Good stuff….but:
“Next week – Molly: Should Girls Really Be Allowed To Do Web Stuff?”
now that’s great.
heh.
this blog post is beneath me.
Ha ha…..class.
I hadn’t seen the 37Signals post, but it really is an example (becoming all too common in this community) of people taking themselves far too seriously….
Nice response too…!
Eh… 37S have repeatedly said they’re sharing what has worked for *them* and the way *they* work. Take what you want from it and leave the rest.
I think those of you who are “offended” (or whatever you wanna call this behavior) are the ones trying to stand on higher ground.
Jealousy, perhaps?
And *this* is what I take away from this post: “I hope people stop writing what they want to write about on their own blogs and write only about things I find interesting.†Pot? Kettle? Black? Still – it got you some traffic guy and your other writing is just far superior to this particular post. Blog looks nice. Site is a wee treat. Elsewhere you’ve got some interesting things to say.
Sniff … what’s that?
Sniff.
Oh yeah, the stench of jealousy.
It reeks, I’m out of here.
Dude, that’s totally not what a meme is!
google:define:meme yields (top of the list):
As defined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976): “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.” “Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. …
…plus I think it’s funny that you bag them out… about bagging other people out… isn’t that kinda like making love for virginity or punching someone in order to stop violence?
_”Eh… 37S have repeatedly said they’re sharing what has worked for them and the way they work. Take what you want from it and leave the rest.”_
Thats exactly what I did.
_”I think those of you who are “offended†(or whatever you wanna call this behavior) are the ones trying to stand on higher ground.”_
No, I’m having a laugh at pomposity.
_”plus I think it’s funny that you bag them out… about bagging other people out… isn’t that kinda like making love for virginity or punching someone in order to stop violence?”_
You think its funny? Thats all I intended. If you want to read anything else into it then thats a matter for you. I assure you nothing else is there – just a humorous dig.
In short people – lighten the fuck up. Which was sort of the original point.
Here here! I posted a comment on their blog (under the same name) and subsequently found this post which makes reference to the exact same point I was hoping to make – though yours is much funnier.
Great!
And they’re feeling it too.
Yeah, what’s with those girl web geeks anyway?
Since I never got to answer the meme last week despite being tagged numerous times, and having read the SVN posts, well, I just had to pull a girl geek .
Genius. Especially the whale reference.
Kev, classic!
Knock, peg and down spring to mind 😉
I just wished someone would ask me 😦
Seems that the next meme is “this blog is beneath me.”
But in all truth, we all become self-important when we start believing in all those compliments.
Beginner’s mind and all that.