Maniacs With Thin Skins

“He irritates the fuck out of me. He’s got carried away with his own scepticism about the internet and it’s become a self-fulfilling prophesy.” Another blogger, on the subject of yours truly.

The fun thing about being The Ad Contrarian is that it's my job is to stick my finger in the eye of conventional advertising wisdom.

Since conventional advertising wisdom is so, well, conventional, and since it is so lacking in, um, wisdom, I seem to have an inexhaustible supply of material.

I try to be an equal opportunity non-believer. My favorite targets are brand babblers, web maniacs, account planners, researchers, and pundits. But I also like to take cheap shots at account people, media people, and creatives. You know, spreading the love.

But I've noticed something.

You can stick your finger in the eye of everyone of these groups and they'll have a sense of humor or sense of proportion about it.  Except one group -- the web maniacs.

As I've said about a million times, I have nothing against web advertising other than to call out the bullshit, hyperbole and words without meaning that extreme web hustlers are fond of.

There are plenty of smart, reasonable people working in digital media who do not make preposterous assertions; who do not think that social media is the answer to every question; who do not speak in the dreadful, impenetrable language of digi-drivel.

So why all the defensiveness and hostility when you point out those who do? Why all the animosity when you examine the short-comings, and catalog the failures of web advertising? Nobody gets all huffy when we criticize tv advertising. Or print. Or radio.

Why are these digi-wonders so sensitive about their precious internet?

And, by the way...
...about that quote at the top. As I said yesterday, I don't do prophesies. Self-fulfilling or otherwise.