I make a new business proposalJul 31 '02 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Before you begin writing a review, check out my idea! What a deal!
Thinking of writing a review? Hang tight a second. I have a better idea. Please hear me out before you decide. I have a business proposal for you. I'm starting a company called Echupaperro, Inc. My name is Richard, but you may call me 'Dick.' (Notice my common touch!) I want you to do some writing work for me. Since you're desperate for the creative outlet and for notice, I'm sure you'll jump at the chance. You will have the opportunity to have your work evaluated by your peers, and to network with them. You may write about virtually any product or topic you wish. The only restriction, of course, is that you may not use any Naughty Words. We, of course, may include all the Naughty-Word Products in our database that we might desire. If you choose to review a Naughty Product, you must nerf your review so that you do not use Naughty Words. Even then, of course, we probably won't bother you unless one of our semi-professional suckups makes a complaint about you. Then we'll decide just how big a suckup this person is, and if we'd be hurting ourselves by telling her to pound sand. If it looks like the winds are blowing against you, we'll make your account and your hard work invisible to everyone except those who love you and, interestingly enough, those who hate you. That way the majority, who don't know you, won't be forced to make up their own minds about you. Neither will newbies. You may publish a picture of yourself on a profile page, so long as it doesn't show your butt, or something else we don't like or understand. If you do, we'll get you for it--but again, only if one of our toadies comes whining to us about it. (We're not sure what we'll do if you hang out your meat on your profile page. Implode, probably.) Then we'll turn a couple of our staff attack chimps on you. We don't have to explain ourselves to you, so you can expect insinuative and vague replies to your inquiries. Our advice is not to bother asking. I don't want you starting any rebellions if you're annoyed with us, so if you do, there Will Be Consequences. Ultimately, if you rebel, we'll cave. We are cowards at heart. But when we cave, understand, it wasn't because you rebelled. It's because we want to rebuild trust, even though it was you who hurt us. We, obviously, did nothing wrong. We plan to let our little community police itself, so long as the community policing doesn't encourage any behaviours we don't like. If it does, we'll step in with a ham-fisted new policy. But don't get me wrong: we believe in community policing with all our hearts. We just don't trust it any further than we would trust Martin Bormann with a can of spray paint behind a synagogue. We anticipate a major financial drain due to people who will write pure garbage, but we aren't worried about that. Our focus will be on singling out one or two Bad People and making examples of them. We will count upon a few pilot fish to root them out for us, and woe be unto them. Now, understand, I've never made a dime of profit, but I still have some venture capital left, so I'm able to pay you a little bit of money. Nothing meaningful, but it's still writing for pay. You'll probably average a dollar per review over six months, if you're lucky. In nine months you can have a Big Gulp! Another way in which we're saving a bundle is that we've prevailed upon a number of users to help maintain our product listings and so forth for us. We have a secret agreement with them, a legal, binding contract they have to sign, and they aren't allowed to discuss it with you. We don't pay them much, but it's more than you'll see if you write here for a millennium. They fall into two categories: a) well-meaning, good-hearted people who are willing to step into the shooting gallery and take the barrages that would otherwise hit us, and b) not-so-well-meaning types who seek after power and see an opportunity to play the only power game they'll ever play. Group a) are the majority. As long as someone takes the bullets for us, why should I care? Here's the real kicker: if we want, we can give part or all of your reviews to one of our advertisers. The one we have in mind is called Three-Eighths.com. We won't ask you, and we won't tell you, sort of like the Army's policy on gay people. We will do it even if you have deleted your review, since we keep copies. This will enable us to avoid paying you anything at all for your review, or gaining any outside reads, since we do not plan to provide links; we will just hand over the content. It's the perfect scenario. You buy products. You write about them, conforming to our wishes. We give you a buck or so, maybe. We hand your work over to others, and make a lot more than a buck or so. What's not to like?  |
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