The MySimon flame war that went too far

Tim Miller, Blur's CEO, regrets writing the e-mails that are now the subject of so much Fuckedcompany.com debate. He wishes his response to a critic of his animation company didn't include so many small-penis insults. He would also like to take back the line about being not just a representative of the company but rather the one who "DEFINE[s] it bitch."

"That was stupid," he says. "The animators here were getting a laugh and it probably let them influence me more than I should have. I pushed the joke too far."

But do his comments make him a typical, arrogant dot-com CEO "dickhead" as Fuckedcompany.com founder Philip J. Kaplan so eloquently put it? No way, says Miller and his employees at the L.A. animation house.

"He's anything but corporate and cruel," says Brandon Davis, an animator. In fact, Miller earns far less than many of his animators -- pulling in $70,000 a year, according to his own calculations -- and says that he's much more of an artist than an executive. "We do what we do for the art," he says. "When we started this company six years ago, we wanted to create the kind of place where artists would want to work. And we've succeeded. Only two people have ever left the company to go somewhere else."

Plus, "the e-mail that came in was abrasive," Davis adds, describing the note from Frank DiMauro (who did not respond to e-mails), which condemned the company's design of the MySimon mascot, an animated smiling shopper. And with lines like "what were you guys thinking?" DiMauro's failed to acknowledge that the MySimon idea came from an advertising firm, not Blur. "If you're not really constructive, you can't expect a constructive answer," Davis says.

Miller agrees. "The 'what were you thinking line' pissed me off," he says. "There was no need for that." So, given the fact that the company's corporate T-shirts say "Fuck Everybody" on the back, he figured that a fiery response would be understood. And while he admits that some of the lines went over the top, Miller says that the last line -- in which he says "I really have enjoyed it! Thanks for being a sport!" -- was meant to show that he'd been kidding.

"I was just trying to be funny," Miller says. "I thought that was obvious."

Apparently he thought wrong. Dozens of Fuckedcompany.com posters are shocked -- just shocked! -- at his lack of professionalism, his arrogance and juvenile sense of humor. Perhaps by the fourth time the small-penis joke appeared, they felt Miller's attempt at humor had become flaccid. But regardless, since the e-mailed exchange started making rounds on the Web, more than 180 people have sent him e-mails with their own two cents. "About 20 percent say 'nice job' and the rest say something like this one here that starts: 'What's going on you small-dicked wanker.'"

Something tells me that Miller won't be responding to that one anytime soon. -- Damien Cave [6:25 p.m. PDT, June 21, 2001]

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"I got Blur's e-mail address from an article in Graphic Design USA (April or May 2001) lauding them for their work animating the MySimon.com character. I figured, here's my chance to let them know what I think. Big mistake. They blew me out of the water and kept up the volleys relentlessly. And now they say 'they were only kidding'? Who are they kidding?

"I was appalled at the crude response and then shocked to realize this was their CEO. I shared the exchange with a close friend and I guess it took off from there. I have no idea who posted that exchange on f-----company.com ... it was certainly not my doing.

"MySimon.com was equally shocked and sent an apology and a $25 coupon for merchandise on the web [insert irony here ...]. Blur erred big time and now they are trying to do some damage control. They are getting back what they dished out.

"I have not heard from this 'twisted boy/man' since. The experience was unnerving and I do not wish it on anyone.

"Let me reiterate that MySimon.com is not at fault here; they have been more than understanding and sympathetic and have behaved like good corporate citizens. I cannot say the same for Blur." [11:50 a.m. PDT, June 22, 2001]

Tune in, turn off, blackout!

Perhaps you've tired of watching California's energy crisis online. Maybe you've already taken Vice President Dick Cheney's 10 energy-saving tips to heart when it comes to electricity consumption. Or maybe you're just feeling a little cocky, having recently purchased a rolling blackout survival kit.

Well, we'd like to remind you -- on the Northern Hemisphere's longest day of the year -- that you have the option of rolling your own blackout today.

Yes, as noted previously in this space, the hour for protesting the Bush administration's energy policies by taking one's household off-grid today from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. in your time zone is roughly upon us.

Posters at Metafilter.com commented with their usual blend of earnestness, snark and freewheeling absurdity.

One poster justified his participation accordingly: "This is an opportunity to get a new perspective on my relationship with electricity -- not to mention with our sun, Sol. This is his day, after all."

Another poster took issue with the idea: "It's ridiculous to foist responsibility on home consumers when businesses like the Gap continue to light their wares full blast even when they're closed!"

And then there were the unusual posts: "I started my voluntary black-out early," reads one. "I'm sitting in the dark right now. I'm not even writing this." -- George Kelly [4:10 p.m. PDT, June 21, 2001]

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All hail the sexiest geek alive

She drives an electric car. She's MIT "cubed," which means that she holds every degree right up to Ph.D. from the university of deep geekdom. She's married to a rocket scientist. She once sued Kozmo.com for spamming her and won $50 in small claims court. When she was 11 years old, she ran electricity through her braces.

I don't care if you are Richard Stallman himself, I defy you to claim that you are geekier than Ellen Spertus, a computer scientist at Mills College who last night was crowned the sexiest geek alive at a pageant at the San Jose Convention Center.

In fact, as part of the talent portion of the contest, Spertus showed a video montage of her life, including an endorsement from the grandfather of free software. A fuzzy image of Stallman came on the screen and the grand pooh-bah of GNUemacs said: "I would describe Ellen Spertus as extremely lovely."

Throughout the competition, Spertus wore a corset decorated with a drawing of a circuit board and a slide rule strapped to her thigh in a leather holster. The slide rule had been her dad's when he was at MIT, and he gave it to her as a graduation present. After a rigorous study of "load-bearing undergarments," she explained that she fashioned her own holster to wear under her skirt à la Sandra Bullock in "Miss Congeniality."

The competition was hugely geeky. One contestant, a Web designer from Houston, described her dream date as Han Solo. Another, a computer animator from Dallas, gave an impassioned "I Have a Dream"-style speech calling for geek unity among all the factions of the geek world.

But not even the geek from Indianapolis who learned to twirl a baton within the last 24 hours -- "because that's what geeks do, they learn things" -- and then proceeded to drop it in midtwirl onstage, not even he could outgeek Spertus.

She bragged that the license plate on her car spells out "V EQ IR." If you don't know what "law" that stands for, well, then that's why she's the sexiest geek alive, and you're not. -- Katharine Mieszkowski [10 a.m. PDT, June 21, 2001]

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Cut-and-paste horoscope horror at Women.com

Sure, the Internet is a fairly lawless place, but when it comes to bringing traffic to a site, there are certain tactics you would expect the big companies to steer clear of.

Take, for instance, the dubious practice of copying text from a rival site that ranks high on search engines and pasting it onto your own. According to the Belgian company Easyscopes.com, a full paragraph of text from one of their sites was copied, almost verbatim, to a Women.com -- now iVillage -- site called Internet Horoscopes.

The offending text has since been removed, but thanks to Google's caching ability, you can still see what looks like a smoking gun. Highlight the white space at the bottom of the page and -- surprise! -- the magical text, printed in a white font on the white background appears.

"That's why Internet Horoscopes gives you instant access to the information that you are looking for. No more clicking through long menus of zodiac signs that don't interest you," it begins.

Substitute "Internet Horoscopes" for "EasyScopes" and you have exactly the same lines that can be found on an archived version of the EasyScopes site.

"It was written with certain key words" says Joe Savelberg, who wrote the EasyScopes site and runs the company along with his parents and one other employee, "because some engines don't look at meta tags, they only look at actual content of the page, so we had to write text that is appealing to engines that look at the actual body content of the page."

Apparently, someone at Internet Horoscopes found it appealing too. So, this subsidiary of Women.com allegedly took a tack normally reserved for porn sites: they copied the text and pasted it on the InternetHoroscope site in text that's invisible to everyone except the search engines.

EasyScopes has filed a $900,000 lawsuit against iVillage.com (which, as of June 18, now owns Women.com), charging copyright infringement and unfair trade practices.

"We are asking for compensation for lost business. They used our text to attract customers; it's unfair competition," says Savelberg.

iVillage.com lawyers called the lawsuit "without merit" but wouldn't comment on the specifics of their defense. Women.com lawyer Elizabeth Hammack, who first received the faxed notice of the suit from EasyScopes, called the charges "totally spurious, an outright attempt to blackmail and get money."

"I don't know how it got there" she said of the text, speculating that the damage might have been done by "a hacker or sabotage." So far, no one's been able to determine how long the invisible text was on the Internet Horoscopes site, which Women.com bought over a year ago, or who's responsible for putting it there.

At Women.com, news of the lawsuit comes as yet another blow to an already beleaguered staff. After layoffs, a protracted acquisition process and current uncertainty about the fate of the San Mateo, Calif., offices, "you're like 'what else is next?'" said Hammack. "It's just such a pain in the butt." --Amy Standen [1:00 a.m. PDT, June 20, 2001]

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