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Guess what, Facebook: when I want people to know it’s my birthday, I will post pictures of myself as a toddler a few days beforehand on my blog — you know, the one that is read by like a thousand people, most of whom don’t know me in real life, mmkay?
The reason I do it that way is because I don’t need everybody in the world who actually has my telephone number calling me on the telephone to wish me a happy birthday. I would rather not have to field phone calls all morning from people who would have otherwise forgotten that it’s my birthday because we are not really that great of friends.
What gives, Facebook?! I’ve seen your creator. He’s a bigger dweeb than I am. I cannot imagine he wants people who aren’t really his close friends calling him all day on his birthday. Wait.
I’m not a Facebook kind of person. You never convinced me to figure out your idiotic overly complicated interface that doesn’t make sense to people with less than ten minutes of time to kill trying to figure it out. And besides, you know as well as I do that I can’t sign off on yet another media that popularizes the institutionalization of Friends Who Aren’t Really Your Friends. I was already in a sorority and now I’m a mommyblogger — throwing in Facebook Friends in earnest is just too damn much to ask of my already overtaxed bullshit fake nice resources.
Let’s just say there’s a reason you’re the PC of social media outlets. Look, Evan Williams is not going to beat Samuel L. Jackson in a cool-off any time soon, but line him up next to Mark Zuckerberg and I think you’ll catch my drift.
Sure, just like with Apple, Twitter sometimes gets shoved a little too far up its own ass with the “who to follow aka people you’d be following already if you didn’t despise them” and “power users aka people you already know and hate,” but at least they are straightforward with their nomenclature — they don’t fuck around, they just straight up call them followers and we all bought it hook line and sinker. You know why? Because that’s what we ARE!
Here’s the thing . . . credibility can suck my ass with a straw.
I’m really not sure how much credibility I have with the Community at Large at present. And I really don’t care, because the people I really care about all pretty much have cut me some slack and know that, even if I have flaws and fuck up sometimes, for the most part I try to do my best with what I do and say, both here and in my regular life. And who cares about the rest?
The thing is, I keep getting emails and more information about that other Situation. You know, to do with The Other People and That Other Stuff that is really not so much of my problem anymore except insofar as it involves continuing litigation about which I’m not at liberty to speak.
Part of me, like the crusading dogooder part — which is like, a tiny, tiny, part of me, by the way — feels obligated to do something about some of this stuff.
Most of me thinks, fuck that noise.
Because look, I’ve got a new ad network, and I’m selling my own ads. I’m not losing money anymore and, besides, this is a free market economy. Everyone is free to choose to stay with or leave their representation as they see fit. I’ve tried selling the story to mainstream media and so far nothing has panned out.
So even though some of the stuff you guys are sending me is — WHOA — really scary and kind of disturbing, I just am like, why? Why are you sending it, you know? Because did you catch what happened to me last week? If not, perhaps you’d like to take a gander? Didn’t work out so well for me the last time I picked up that particular topic, and I’m not so sure that I’m ready to do so again.
I’d like to have this conversation continue, and I’d like to do whatever I can to facilitate that discussion. However, I am not convinced that I am the right person to continue to ferry it into its next incarnation. If you think that I’m wrong, I’m happy to be dissuaded from my current position — it’s not that I want the discourse to end, it’s just that I think that if I’m the only one who continues to post on it, that’s the only likely conclusion for it to reach.
As always, I would love to hear your thoughts, peanut gallery.
For those of you who do not already know, I come from a family full of lawyers.
In fact, one of the reasons I didn’t become a lawyer myself was because I was concerned that if I had, the earth might have swallowed up inside of itself from the ego vacuum that would have been created by such a happening over an already ego-heavy area like Southern California.
Therefore, when MyFormerAdNetwork breached its contract with me two weeks ago, I did not speed-dial Gloria Allred (or somebody like her) in search of a quick payday, as some of you might have surmised, based on the lovely graphic provided by ShePosts.com.
Rather, I asked somebody in my family to dash off a quick email to them to protect my rights.
And I have a feeling that, had you been in my shoes, and you had your ads taken away without cause and for fraudulent reasons — as you all witnessed occur two weeks ago — you would have done the same.
Nevertheless, to clear up the confusion, the email that was sent on my behalf is pasted below (minus any names of affected parties except for myself). Please note that it was written by email, rather than through cutting out letters from magazines and pasting them onto a piece of paper with rubber cement.
Please be advised I represent Ms. Anna Viele as well as ABDPBT.com. I have been closely following the course of events over the last few weeks. Without arguing the merits of your numerous and egregious misrepresentations and actions during that time, I am now forced to respond to your termination of my client from the network.
You terminated because you think Anna misrepresented her numbers. In fact, what she stated was that those numbers were a “Case Study”. There was no representation that the numbers were hers. In fact, the numbers she used were absolutely accurate and we can prove it. As such, you terminated her in knowing violation of the terms and conditions of your contract with her. This was done, clearly, in bad faith.
We are in the processes of compiling many, many case studies. Your faithful members are knocking down the doors with their numbers, some on the record and some off the record. Clearly you did not enjoy or endorse ABDPBT’s recent “how to” series empowering bloggers to generate their own ad revenue and monetizing their blogs beyond the purview of your monolithic enterprise and “service”. You wanted to disassociate yourself from one of the most popular bloggers because she was showing your members and your potential members how to live and earn and prosper without you. You then created a series of bogus, bad faith excuses to at first suspend and now to terminate her from your service as a measure of your dissatisfaction with her speaking out monetizing mommy blogs. Shame on you!
Everyone knows the effect your signing up PW has had on their own situations. What they do not know, and what is becoming readily apparent, is that you are operating in bad faith and fraudulently under the terms of your agreements with them. I wonder if you will be able to still call it a “network” when all you have left is PW?
To wit, and in any event, we are in the process of preparing a massive lawsuit against you alleging, among other things: (1) breach of contract; (2) breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing; (3) fraud; and (4) intentional and negligent interference with prospective economic advantage.
This is about business as far as I am concerned. As such, my client is willing to settle this matter and quietly move on with her blog and herself. The price is $150,000. This offer shall expire upon close of business, PST, Friday April 30, 2010. My client is willing to settle for so little to simply buy herself peace and move on. Our mathematicians have come up with some very interesting conclusions about your business both before and after PW came on board. If you want to fight this then let’s go ahead and do so. It should be very interesting. I am looking forward to looking at your books and your contracts which, I am confident, will help confirm the hundreds of reports we already received from your subscribers. My guess is that at the end of the day Anna will either own your company or your company will no longer exist. How this plays out is your decision.
I look forward to your response.
Please note, in particular, that there is no mention of me ever, under any circumstances, discontinuing the writing of my posts about advertising inventory tiers in the BlogHer advertising network.
This is because I would never, ever, under any circumstances, have made such an offer. I would never have put a price on my posts.
This is in direct contrast to the allegation made by Elisa Camahort-Page, Co-Founder and current manager of events, marketing and corporate operation of MyFormerAdvertisingNetwork, and as reported by Esther Brady Crawford of ShePosts.com on May 1, 2010, who claimed that the offer of $150,000 was to “stop the posts,” and which has since been picked up and run with by the Internet At Large.
I’m guessing that — if Elisa indeed did say this, and it is not a misquote — she probably did so because the attorney was simply hired to write a letter and is not formally on retainer, and therefore did not actually explain my email to MyFormerAdvertisingNetwork’s executives at length, so they did not understand my offer and what it actually covered. Therefore the executives at MyFormerAdvertisingNetwork attached the settlement offer to what they most wanted most in the world to have happen, which was to have my posts stop appearing.
Which is actually kind of interesting, now that I think about it.
Because if the attorney had been on retainer, he would have explained to her what my letter actually said: viz., you will avoid a lawsuit that is actually worth a lot more than $150,000 because it will expose a business model that is fraudulent, a contract that is made in bad faith with all of your publishers because it does not treat them fairly, and exposure at a national level to class action lawsuits, bad publicity, termination of relationships with advertisers, et cetera.
I’m guessing that about Elisa’s quote because I am a generous person. If I were an ungenerous person — or if I were my attorney/my family member I would allege that Elisa’s quote is just another example of MyFormerAdvertisingNetwork’s dishonest business practices and their ongoing effort to smear my name with the community. Indeed, that is precisely what has occurred over the past few days as a result of that quote.
Click on each to read the full text, redacted only for the names and addresses of attorneys. Enjoy.
Page One
Page Two
For those of you not wanting to wade through the legalese, there are two salient points to get from perusing their attorney’s letter, viz.:
That MyFormerAdvertisingNetwork’s own attorney was under no misconception about the terms of my settlement offer governing a breach of contract claim ONLY; that the settlement offer had nothing to do with writing or not writing of posts; and
That my contract with MyFormerAdvertisingNetwork was terminated under false pretenses, viz. ostensibly because I published false statistics regarding my own traffic stats by tweeting about a blogger case study, when in fact I was tweeting about another blogger’s statistics which were completely accurate and, what’s more, completely verifiable, and so my claim for wrongful termination is not only a viable claim but in fact something easily proven in a court of law.
Just Like The Number Where 2+2=Six. A blog about life in the family Six, party of four.
ABDPBT GLOSSARY
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ONLINE DATING CHRONICLES
Sure, I eventually met my husband, Mr. Right-Click, through online dating. But not before I had dated nearly one hundred of Los Angeles' least suitable bachelors. Laugh along in my Online Dating Chronicles.
SPY ON ME
Looking for something to read? Wondering what I'm reading? Perhaps it's time to start Spying On My Google Reader to find out about the coolest stuff I've read lately on the internet.
MUCKRAKING
Sometimes I like to muckrake. You can read about it here. Oh, and here too. Listen, if I don't do it, that muck will just keep piling up until we have to call a roto-rooter. So really, you should thank me. You're welcome.
LISTS
You know, you slave away at blog posts day after day, you try to write fiction, you try to provide interesting social commentary, but at the end of the day, they come for the lists. Check out List Mondays to see what all the hullabaloo is about, because I sure as hell cannot explain it.
OTHER ABDPBT BLOGS
ABDPBT Personal Finance
Shining a light on the big business of poop.
ABDPBT Tech
Tech for mommy bloggers. Or bloggers who aren't mommies, but hang out with them. Or Dads. Whatever.
ABDPBT Commodity Fetishism
This is where I post stuff that I think is cool. Maybe you will think it's cool, too.
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LOS ANGELES
Los Angeles is where I was born and raised. I always thought I'd leave, but for some reason I never did. Sometimes, I like it here. Other times, I'm not so sure. But good or bad, it has made me who I am.
Sometimes I take the melodrama of my life and twist and turn it until it looks almost charming. I do this because I want you to like me:
Cigarettes & Green Felt: This is about the time I figured out that adults were mostly full of shit.
Assburger: It's not just a disorder on the autism spectrum: it's also one of your relatives!
On Truth: Sometimes somebody will say something and it hurts your feelings. And then you will write a story about it and your aunt will call it "phenomenal." Everyone else will try to pretend like it never happened.
The Sheer And Unmitigated Power of Bob Mould: Sometimes you spend your formative years obsessed by an unrequited teenage crush, and then one day you realize that person is now an orthopedic surgeon who lives in your neighborhood. It kinda sucks when that happens.
Ben From Madera: For one Halloween, Ben dressed up like a bee, like that kid in the Blind Melon video. That's how I will always remember him.
Mr. Right-Click
He is my best friend, even if he uses a PC. And the fact that sometimes he will pretend to be a "Pancake Pirate" is only part of the reason. Arrrr!
Mini
His cutie-pie percentile group is off the charts.
Spinning
If you think this is just about exercise, then you have underestimated how wildly inappropriate people can be when they undergo physical pain in a group setting.
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