Example #1 :
FreeNode-#bitcoin-otc-eu.log:Apr 21 14:37:48 {gigavps} my fav thus far from MPOE-PR "The deeper the hole you dig the further you will have to climb out, and Mr. P is easily the least forgiving type you will meet in your lifetime."
FreeNode-#bitcoin-otc-eu.log:Apr 21 14:56:10 {gigavps} so Masta P, i still don't understand why MPOE-PR speaks for you
FreeNode-#bitcoin-otc-eu.log:Apr 29 15:02:23 {gigavps} seems MPOE-PR has decided to focus on marketing instead of ruffling the forum feathers
FreeNode-#bitcoin-assets.log:Nov 23 17:13:22 {gigavps} you should send mpoe-pr into my thread to quote you on that
A lot must have changed since April, if the same person complaining about my PR then is seeking the support of my PR now. What exactly has changed ?
Everyone thinks PR is, shortly put, "be nice to everyone". Thus, they sugarcoat everything, they can never say No! and above all can never say "Fuck you!". Because you can not have meaningful discourse without even the possibility of "no" and "fuck you", they end up with meaningless discourse. Here's an example of the type :
Hello,
My name is Natalie and I am responsible for our customer support. Due to insufficient CAD on our account at the moment, we are unable to send CAD withdrawals and today is a public holiday in Japan. We will be working on having the conversion done after the long weekend to have enough CAD in order to process your withdrawal. Our apologies once again for the delay and inconvenience this has caused and thank you for your patience while we are working to resolve this matter.
This was Natalie's offering to a guy who was complaining that after one month's wait he still hadn't been sent his money, but instead was sent this. You've read it before, haven't you ? How many times ?
That's it, there you have it, that's the state of business communication currently, that's how it's understood, mentally represented and universally expected to work : be nice to everyone. Since you're being nice to everyone obviously you can no longer be in any way useful to anyone, but someone somewhere somehowi made the strategic decision that this is okay, that trading complete uselessness for partial niceness is worthwhile.
This happens to be exactly what PR is not. PR is not about clogging the channels with meaningless formulaic stupidity and actively attempting to prevent anything from moving either direction. PR is the effort of clearly communicating the position of the company to the market and the position of the market to the company. Clearly communicating means that sometimes the customer will be delivered a large steaming plate of "You're stupid". Clearly communicating means that sometimes the company will have to come out with a "We've been stupid" dounce hat and eat some crow.
I made the strategic decision that it's all worth it. I am perfectly willing to eat some crow if it comes to it, and I'm also perfectly willing to call "customers" idiots, if they're idiots. I went as far as to give the PR signed license to do exactly that : call people idiots.ii
There was a lot of armflailing about this unheard-of insanity, about my complete malfeasance and my PR's offensive incompetence, mostly from patent idiots with some unfortunate souls dragged into the fray by simple proximity, much like a river coming high sometimes carries unexpected items along in its fury.
But what's the end result ? The end result is that I have PR tempered in raw shitiii, and so whenever shit hits the fan I have a trusted, respected and powerful voice at my disposal. Everyone else has PR made out of sugar-coated papier mache. Whenever shit hits the fan they have to run and hide. What is the fucking point of PR if all it's good for is to sprout nonsense as long as things are going fine but has to disappear into a hole at the first cramp of crisis ?
Strategic superiority, this is what it is. Making this correct choice, in the face of everyone else knowing better, this is what strategic superiority is.
Example #2 : Early on I made the strategic decision to make my exchange inaccessible to the offensively stupid poor. I do not mean the poor, poverty in itself is just a state, it means nothing. I do not mean the stupid, stupidity in itself is just a state, it means nothing. The offensively stupid poor are however not simply stupid and not simply poor. They are something like Inaba.
For this purpose I did two things : one is that I introduced a fixed fee, which while significantly lower than what you'd expect of a fee in the field is still significantly higher than the disposable income of the poor and the other is that I used technology which while widely known and amply used was still not anything the WYSYWYG/GUI crowd has ever met. Together they did in fact - I am proud to report - manage to prevent the offensively stupid poor from joining MPEx. Going through the support requests is literally a pleasure, half the time it turns out to have been the most productive part of the day.
Everyone else made the exact opposite strategic choice : as many users as possible. Sam Gumpy, bereft of articulate speech yet innerly convinced he's the Emperor of Chinaiv was good enough a user for anyone else. The net result ?
Oh, but the net result is glorious. You can read it in detail or else I shall summarize it for convenience.
Gigavps lists some miner bonds on GLBSE. GLBSE implodes. Gigamining attempts to reconstruct things somehow, which in any possible contemplation has the marginal disadvantage of excluding some very small holders (for whom any burden - such as for instance "send a postcard" - is likely to exceed their total investment). The conclusion ?
For those with small holdings your options may well end up being either walk away or try to cause grief by reporting what happened to as many regulatory bodies as you can. Your call on which of those options you take.
Now, is there any doubt that some people will try to cause grief simply for the purpose of causing grief ? Not in my mind. They feel entitled to some BTC. The mental process goes something like this :
- Person A has lost that BTC for them.
- They do not wish to accept this fact, so they mentally construct the invalid alternative "either we accept that person A has lost our BTC which is now therefore lost or else we assign the BTC debt to person B". This alternative does not exist, yet since one end of the alternative comes to "no BTC" and the other comes to "BTC" it will be evaluated to come to "Person B is responsible for the BTC A lost".
- If asked to evaluate whether their constructed alternative above is logically valid or not, they will proceed similarly : if it is not then no BTC. If it is then BTC. Therefore it is.
Honest toil not so much, but honest cunning aplenty in this fabled subsection of the population, the offensively stupid poor. The costs of the strategic mistake of dealing with them are huge.
Up until recently it was practically impossible to become embroiled into any sort of dealing with the subgroup, their ownership being strictly assumed and their lives strictly subsumed by the corporations competent at dealing with the human cattle : fastfood providers, supermarkets, the government. Both as employers and providers these specialised bureaucracies have the necessary tools, including cattle prods (or whatever they're called now, non-lethal something or the other) to correctly handle them. They have the chemicals, they've done the research, know the behavioural patterns, have the walls all built to obstruct vision, living arrangements all thought through and everything.
Bitcoin suddenly opened the gate. It is a poisonous offering. You are grossly unequipped to interact straight with the refuse of Western society. Accepting investors with fortunes under a million dollars or whatever the limit was placed for US citizens may make sense. Accepting investors with fortunes under any arbitrary value and simultaneously wits under any arbitrary threshold is not a sound business plan but a strategic mistake.
There is a reason some salaries are very high : strategic competence is both very valuable and very rare.
———- I'll tell you who, too : the strategic management of FCMG retailers, principally the large supermarkets. The reasoning for this strategic decision was that since their customer is borderline mentally retarded it makes absolutely no sense to try and engage him in communication. It is for them more productive to just jam the channels shut and let hunger and gluttony work their normal magic.
Then hordes of mindless imbeciles limited themselves to copying this, to the point that it has become the statu quo. [↩]
- For srsly. When's the last time you had a customer that did that ? Never ? I tell you... 'til you do you haven't lived, as a PR. [↩]
- Carlin lives forever. [↩]
- Not in terms of obligations and responsibilities, mind you, just entitlements. [↩]