My 3-Minute Roast, Vol. 2, No. 12

Your Poke in the Eye of the Online/Multimedia Industrial Complex

[scientifically tested to take no longer than 3 minutes to read; scientifically proven to make *you* happy]

You're Not a Statistic, You're a Human Being (We'd Like to Sell to)

YourTown, USA -- It has come to our attention that our publication contains information that we decided you would want. We thought that our combined years of journalistic excellence and hi-jinks would make us the rightful conduits to spray our dorky in-jokes and gossipy innuendo in haphazard fashion into your collective emailboxes. Turns out, we were wrong. Very wrong.

The truth is: You are right. Everyone from My McDonald's to MyLaunch has proven in the Court of Trendy Cyber-Marketing that everything should be tailored to your passions, desires and sudden whims. You are our boss. Thanks to new BounceBack Inferrance Guidance(tm) systems, we will be able to direct 3MR in the direction you choose.

[you are growing weary of this long-winded introduction]

Hello Email Reader! Welcome to My3MR!

Your weather: The weather in your town of Peoria, Illinois is cold and snowy with a 20 percent chance of something interesting ever happening.

Your news: In the top of your news, you got up this morning to find that the other yellow sock is still in the dryer, your breath smelled like lima bean juice, and someone stole your newspaper...again. In other news, Monica Lewinsky breathed.

Your business: The stocks you own have done very well lately, gaining quite a few points. You can now afford to purchase items from our online store, or perhaps you'd like to buy something from our advertisers? We promise never to sell your personal information to anybody else (unless we were in dire straits from mismanagement, had laid off half our staff, and were looking to scare up some money quick).

Your recreation: The snow's covering the slopes, so head out for some snowboarding this weekend! We understand your leg is fully healed from your last accident, you settled out of court with the ski resort, and the military won't be sending low-flying jets into the mountains for the next few days.

Your food: Everything you've eaten recently is now sitting in the pit of your stomach, or in various states of digestion, gurgitation, or regurgitation. Personalized humor probably makes your stomach turn.

Your patience: You could probably stand about 32 more words, or about three quick jokes describing either the cream pie hurtled into Bill Gates' face, the rain that is washing away most of northern California, or the exact ingredients of Turtle Wax.

You can only stand so much.

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Your DeathRace 2000(tm) Update
[each week we'll highlight the lowlights at one of three failing online ventures: Snap!, HotWired and Slate]

[follow DeathRace online at: http://www.mediawhore.com/deathrace]

San Francisco Bay Guardian Uncovers Dirt at HotWired

A Bay Guardian press release states:

"The controversy surrounds the first-ever commercial spam issued by Wired to HotWired members. The spam offered HotWired members an exclusive opportunity to open an account with the on-line investment firm Wit Capital. The letter mentioned that Wit Capital was one of Wired's business partners and that Wired had recently purchased a minority stake in the privately funded company. The e-mail was still apparently in violation of a 3-year-old HotWired policy in which the company promised to protect the privacy of its members and never to sell its list of e-mail addresses, nor to use it for advertising purposes.

"Further complicating matters, was a February 1998 issue of Wired magazine featuring a story in the form of an excerpt from a book about Wit Capital written by Wit's owner Andrew Klein. The article did not mention until the ninth of its ten pages that Wired had an interest of any kind in the success or failure of the company for which it was providing such great publicity."

The Bay Guardian article, written by former HotWired staffer Brooke Shelby Biggs, contained leaked information from a certain copyeditor. Wired searched through email logs and found the leak, promptly firing the copyeditor. Tensions are mounting...

"My 3-Minute Roast" is a weekly, advertisement-free, opinionated rip on anything that strikes your fancy in the online world. at your beck and call:

Max Schlickting - Editor-in-Chief
Barbara Yalpsid - Online Editor
Lefty Periwinkle - First Amendment Expert

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