mippymoo wrote:I don't know what's worse - shamelessly piggybacking on the UK riots (imagine if a British site posted a similar riff on 9/11) or that horrid attempt at Generic Working-Class British Accent which none of us actually speak.
0/10 must try harder.
Hi, I'm the guy who wrote the copy for this sale. Sorry to weigh in so late but here's what I have to say for myself.
First, I understand it's an extremely sensitive topic, but the only targets of mockery in this piece are those who prey on their neighbors. I wouldn't presume to comment on any other aspect of the riots, from the putative causes to the effects on the victims. But I don't feel at all sorry about ridiculing shameless, opportunist thugs.
Second, in our early days, when we were a completely unknown company that suddenly started selling stuff at prices way below anywhere else on the Internet, Woot was sometimes accused of peddling stolen merchandise. This piece was also meant as a sort of riff on that reputation.
I don't think 9/11 is an appropriate analogue at all. We certainly didn't make any jokes about 7/7. But if these riots had happened in the United States, we definitely would have done something dealing with it. (If I had anything to do with it, that is. I don't always get to make the final call around here.)
As to the clumsy dialect, guilty as charged. But to get the point across at all, I had to write in a way that an American audience would immediately understand as "British lout". I also hoped that maybe there'd be a comic echo in there of the tradition of horrid "English" accents in American movies, from van Dyke to Costner.
Anyway, none of this is meant to dismiss your own feelings about it. Just wanted to let you know that it wasn't intended to make people like you feel worse about the awful things your country's going through. To the extent that I did, it's a case of misjudgment and not intent, and I take full responsibility for that misjudgment. Thanks.
(To anyone who's interested, especially Americans who are wondering what it's all about, the most interesting commentary I've read on the riots came from Russell Brand, of all people.)
