Making a statement of fact a troll doth make, eh Achaea?

No. Taking any excuse to flame doth a troll make.

Harde, if you really think that was flaming...

Oy vey. Now, a flame would involve actually attacking someone rather then making an offhand statement that is factually correct.

If I called you a "sorry sack of sh!t", that would be a flame. Saying that "Hey, some people think you troll!" is not.

The former is -attacking- someone, while the latter isn't. Comprende?

It should also be noted that the_logos is the one who took the time to coordinate the partnerships between several games and game-related companies (not just his own) and the Child's Play charity.

I'm also pleased to report that I've seen a bit of traffic coming my way thanks to the time he took to involve me and set up our presence on the charity's website.

Even if we don't end up doing a full-blown marketing effort, projects like this are a huge help.

Everyone with more than half a brain thinks you're an idiot who has never actually done anything of worth in MUDs, preferring instead to spend what little creative energy you apparently possess flaming and trolling on various MUD-related boards.

Not a flame, apparently. Interesting. I didn't realize that simply adding "Other people think" or some equivalent on the front of a flame changes it into not a flame. Sure seems juvenile to me, but then, I clearly don't possess your level of general sophistication so maybe I'm just missing something as I wallow around in a morass of my own ignorance and stupidity.

--matt

Hopefully you'll see more too after I put out a press release about the 6 text MUD companies donating to Child's Play. I'll do it next week after people are back from Thanksgiving.

--matt

See, Harde?

-That's- a flame.

Yes, of course. It's a flame when I do it. It's not a flame when you do it. My mistake, sorry.

What I wrote.

Now we can argue this all day, Achaea, but that's not really a flame. Maybe a bit of a poke, but as I said - So long as people handle you like a troll and don't take stuff you say insultingly/personally, they'll be able to stomach ya fine, bud.

Using charities for with the little bald kids suffering from cancer and crippled kids with as a vehicle for mud promotion is a pretty darn slick idea.  

More hits.  More players.  More traffic.  More promotion.

That's what charity is all about.  It's all about you.

God bless you worthless bastards.   :-)

Uh. Yeah. #### us and everything. And, while you're at it, go give to Child's Play and put your money where your mouth is.

I'm not even a little sorry if organizing a charity drive or talking about organizing a joint marketing endeavour offends you or insults you. The fact that it apparently does it just beyond bizarre to me.

--matt

Aw shucks no!  I'm not at all sold on the marketing opportunity yet.  There's got to be some angles I'm missing. I'm still in the cost-benefit analyis stage.  You must understand this is a pretty new paradigm shift for me.  I'm used to just giving.  It had never once occurred to me that my mud could reap a whirlwind of benefit from it.  And frankly, I have this problem of not being able think outside a somewhat limited and narrow moral box, being imprisoned by such embarassing quaint and irrational humility regarding such weighty matters as charity and exploitation.   Rest assured I will check with both my lawyer and preacher.

BTW, how many hits and referrals are the little sick kids getting you?  

Do you think maybe we can get limited edition ZMud disks into their small hands with perhaps a special edition mud list databases of only the donors muds?

And like the owner of Achaea said, I'm not at all one bit sorry if anyone's offended.   That's your problem.  I've got a business to constantly promote so if your offended it means you need to buck up, shut up and get outta my way.  Got it.  Good.

Well, considering the idea of business giving percentages of their earnings to charities (whether it's cancer patients or United Way or Habitat for Humanity, doesn't matter) has been a pretty common tradition in the world, I'm not exactly sure where your venom's coming from, friend.

Am I glad kids get cancer so that we get visits to our games? No. Am I glad that we can help the kids AND get some visibility? Sure. I'd be disingenuous to claim otherwise. But there's nothing immoral about it.

That's right. If you're offended by us giving to charity and announcing it, that's your problem, not mine, as it doesn't actually impact my life to any measureable degree. I find your attitude churlish, self-centered, and incredibly short-sighted. I'd like to sit you down with some of the kids who will benefit and have you tell them that you'd rather we hadn't done this, since apparently you feel it's more important for you not to see the announcement than it is for the kids to get some light into their pretty crappy lives.

See? You don't have to care about my opinion about you either.

I'm sure glad Bill Gates and his wife Melinda don't listen to this kind of nonsense when people criticize them for publicizing their donations. Largest charitable foundation in existence. Yay Bill. Personally I want to know what companies or extremely rich individuals are acting like good citizens. I want them to serve as rolemodels for others, or, if you will, create peer pressure for others to give.

--matt

Look I've already explained how short-sighted and misguided I was.  I didn't realize how much I could benefit from this marketing opportunity.  You are preaching to the holy choir now.

Wow.  I didn't realize we could go in and actually touch them.  I thought they were sick.  This is great news and brings up another excellent marketing opportunity.  Maybe you thought of it, maybe not.  I am glad you are finally talking about the kids, because there's another great way to exploit them.  Hear me out.  Can we get get pictures of them with my mud's T-shirts on them?  Invite in the AP, UPI, Reuters.  That would be a HUGE two-fer.  Free newspaper advertising!!!  Just like what I thought this thread was about until you brought up this charity thing, which at first admittedly didn't make any sense to me.  But I see the light now!  

Oh no I was telling a little white lie, just like you are.  You see like you I do care about public opinion, otherwise it would serve no purpose at all in posting, and being a "good public mud citizen" would be a waste of time.  You simply cannot BE a role model without letting people know about it.  I mean how will anyone know just how great we are if we didn't shove it in their pathetic faces and do a lot of self promotion, prancing, preening, and crowing about it.  It's our burden as elite moral leaders of the communtity to do this without shame and unabashedly.... in order to goad, pressure, and shame the lesser more immoral members of the mud community into being better citizens just like us.  :-)

You can see the Bill Gates story touched my soul. No sense requoting it as I don't want to get choked up.


Oh and hey.. *nudge nudge*  Psst... More hits, more money, more players, more fun.  

I'm thinking Africa may have a lot of opportunity for charitable business explotiation.   Can we ship in some starving children with distended bellies and get pics of them playing our muds for food.

All,

I tried to organise something along this intent a couple of years ago. Not so much buying adspace, but instead getting a group of the larger muds together to allow more traffic to flow between the sites rather than them being disjointed. It didn't happen because I was doing many other things on my mud at the time, I didn't have time for it.

It's perfectly possible, free - and just takes someone with a bit of time, design and organising skills. 20 muds all with a little link on their homepage to some other microsite promoting both those muds in particular (as payback) and mudding in general - a microsite targeted at specific audiences (ie one page for the bookies, one for the ad&d guys, yadda yadda).

I'd also advise anyone seeking a target audience not just to try and specify them too much. Go for all you can, in every way you can, using every hook you have. Also have a read of this - the stuff is as true today as when I wrote it several years ago:

I told myself I was going to bite my tongue, but man... Tyche, what's your deal? I've always enjoyed reading your posts on the various MU*-related forums I visit, but I think you're a little off-kilter here.

Your little lampooning tirade about needing to give in complete selflessness and altruism demonstrates a distinct ignorance of human psychology - whether it's feeling good individually (i.e. your apparent motivation of choice) or giving your cause or company more exposure as a group (i.e. what's happening here), absolutely no-one "donates" something without some sort of compensation.

Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, you don't really have the right to give these folks a hard time for donating money and resources to this charity because you don't approve of their motivations, whatever they may be. That is, not unless you happen to be a child with cancer and are in a position to benefit from what they've generously decided to part with, and what, by definition, others (including yourself?) have not. Such an excessive degree of misplaced self-righteousness is not at all becoming.

In other words - can it already. Sheesh.

I'm not even sure where the notion of "exploitation" came from. Which kids are being exploited, and how, exactly is this happening?

The charity is getting some great public relations by Logos just bringing up its name in this thread. Prior to his previous thread about it, I'd never even heard of Child's Play. I'm pretty confident that many readers here hadn't ever heard of it til then either.

You realize of course that most non-profs have to PAY for this kind of PR? Do you think the United Way gets all of its advertising for free? Do you realize that even the American Cancer Society has an entire division devoted specifically to public relations, and has to PAY its employees to do their jobs?

Where do you think the money comes from, for such an endeavor? It comes from people who are willing to exchange cash for their name on an ad. The nickles and quarters donated add up, sure. But it's the "heavy hitters" such as baseball leagues that have charity games, and famous entertainers who provide charity performances, who bring in the big bucks to these organizations.

All of these endeavors result in attraction drawn to the donating party. And all of this is intentional. I see absolutely nothing wrong with it. It's a win-win situation for everyone. The charity gets the cash it needs, PLUS it gets its name plastered all over the program for the function, AND the party offering the donation gets its name mentioned in the newspapers.

Who exactly is being exploited? Who is "losing" from this situation? Who - is suffering SO much that ANYONE should find a problem with it?