HN Explorer

33 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 73.5 ms ] thread
trickjarrett
Shock of all shocks. NO ONE saw this coming. eye roll
baddox
Yeah no joke. Every comment on every submission of the original story to every social news site on the internet expressed suspicion that this was marketing.
petercooper
And yet they kept discussing it and were interested in the (non)story. Proves human nature.
pg
The surprising thing was that TechCrunch wrote about it.
furyg3
The surprising thing is that people read TechCrunch.
baddox
What is TechCrunch?
daniel-cussen
I believed it. A guy who changes his name to Sunshine Megatron might do anything.
chaostheory
I guess they learned something from furniture stores
agotterer
100K shirts sold in 3 weeks. Brilliant. Props to the marketing concept.
condor
yes props for making each and every one of those customers feel like suckers, brilliant marketing move that's sure to pay off handsomely over the long term . . . although something tells me t-shirt hell's customers don't have a problem with being made to feel like suckers.
petercooper
A lot of Microsoft's customers feel like suckers but most keep paying for upgrades and buying more. It works.
agotterer
I didn't say I respected them. The whole company is about treating everything as a joke. They aren't selling expensive software licenses here. They aren't fishing for respect. They want the "wow" factor. And they are good at getting it.
condor
I understand their deal, I just don't think manipulating your customers into making a purchase is a good longterm strategy, even if some of the customers get the joke . . . time will tell I guess. Also, props usually means proper recognition/respect . . . http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=props just sayin . . .
pxlpshr
Obnoxious isn't a marketing concept.
petercooper
It can be - it's just rarely a good one. Rich Jerk is a great example of this - a heavily cross-promoted product that's done very well.
unalone
It is if you're T-Shirt Hell and you sell shirts based on the concept of causing offense. Their whole thing is to piss people off, and they did it again.
pxlpshr
I understand, it was a cynical comment about marketing. :)
sethg
That's not marketing, that's fraud.

In a number of states, it's illegal to have a "going out of business sale" unless you are actually going out of business.

dcurtis
How awesome would it be if someone sued them for this? It's worth snooping around to see if what he did was illegal.
ivank
Already flagged and deleted yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=484639
petercooper
The discussion and votes given seem to indicate people are interested in the story nonetheless. censorship--
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
Harkins
Quality control != censorship
petercooper
Censorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful or sensitive

Quality control would be removing spam, nonsensical content or, in some cases, content that's wildly off-topic.

Considering the original T-Shirt Hell story was run here without being "quality controlled" away, it seems reasonable to accept that a followup is, therefore, not off-topic for HN. That makes the removal of said story censorship and not quality control.

Erf
Would've appreciated an NSFW on this.
jrockway
What exactly is NSFW? (Of course, reading HN is not exactly work-related anyway, right?)
palish
More like NSFUB (Not Safe For Uptight Bosses).
Erf
That is, of course, subjective, but I'm pretty sure a site that uses the n-bomb and the c-bomb (and an arsenal of others) qualifies.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
brentr
Perhaps they should now create a new shirt that says, "I got suckered by tshirthell.com". That's sure to create more buzz for them.
keltecp11
i bought 3 shirts... you got me.