• so* want a "nancy-boy" hair-gel promo for SpikeTV...

Gotcha. That sounds a lot better - I'll definitely keep watching then.

I'm glad I recorded it so I could fast forward through all those relentless "Spike TV is for MEN! MEN! Manly Men, I tell you! Look! Boobs! And fights! Manly Men watch Spike!"

I used to watch Blade on Spike, and had to do the same thing with the commercials. Spike, not so big with courting the female viewers.... in fact, they cancelled Blade because it didn't attract enough male viewers. If I recall correctly it attracted sufficient female viewers, but they didn't want us. The bastards ended it on a cliffhanger, too.

Some people over at TWOP are convinced that's why Dresden Files hasn't been picked up.

If I recall correctly it attracted sufficient female viewers, but they didn't want us.

yeah, cause we don't buy stupid shit just 'cause TV tells us to. Not that all men do, but their target 18-24 demographic is much more likely to say "dude! that's so cool" and buy random shit.

I was thinking about this lately. You know where my actual buying choices originate? A) Friends talking about the product and B) the intarwebs. If there really were an insidious marketing plan where people were paid to talk up a product like William Gibson's, I would totally fall for it. If it were you people who were being paid. Hey, are you people being paid?

But Tivo, Vonage, All-Clad, the Harmony (I didn't buy one, but I talked it up to a friend who bought one). Those were all heavily influenced by conversations with friends here and elsewhere. Appliances & major purchases like that are all from consumer research places like Consumer Reports.

The only thing I can think of that I bought off of tv was the Billy Mays Hercules Hook! Which is awesome.

I don't know. I just think if I were an advertiser, I might spend some more time on making my web presence friendly, navigable and searchable, 'cause that's where all my purchase decisions are being made.

If there really were an insidious marketing plan where people were paid to talk up a product like William Gibson's, I would totally fall for it. If it were you people who were being paid. Hey, are you people being paid?

actually, I have a friend whose job it is to surf the net, report on what people are saying about her client, and talk up their products.

Mad Men: I was talking to a friend who is an attorney and I had no idea that it was v. likely that contraceptives were illegal for unmarried women at that time.

And did you guys think that Draper's wife's disorder was a panic attack? I thought it was going to be something like ms which had to have been really difficult to diagnose and pretty much untreatable at the time. (Or so I would guess.)

Mad Men: I was talking to a friend who is an attorney and I had no idea that it was v. likely that contraceptives were illegal for unmarried women at that time.

Birth control in general was illegal in some states until 1965.

It was a completely different world back then. Was New York one of those states?

Anyway, the case was Griswold vs. Connecticut - where Griswold was convicted for providing information about contraceptives to married couples.