Cocky, Feckless Clowns All the Way Down.

You might enjoy this short Facebook conversation I had with Barry Strugatz (a friend who first tipped me to DiFara Pizza, who was aliased as "Larry" in this foundational document of the whole Chowhound movement) about the Chowhound reanimation:

Barry: How dare you condescendingly tell redesigners, reacquirers, relaunchers, deep diggers and recipe designers about food and food lovers! These people are experts for crying out loud!

Jim: So true!

My friend Bill Monk summed it up best. When Red Ventures decided to close it up even though it was still popular and profitable (it wasn't making a BILLION DOLLARS, and they were culling properties making less than a BILLION DOLLARS, because they no longer traffic in millions), I submitted a few requests and suggestions, and they answered me condescendingly. Exactly like every product manager since the day I sold.

Bill said it was remarkable that I was still hearing “Yeah thanks but we got this” even as they were literally shutting the thing down. That's it precisely.

As I related in my series about the initial sale of Chowhound to CNET: when I told my new boss that neither Andrew, David, Margaret, nor Sandy (fictional users he'd had created - at vast expense - to better understand our audience) sound anything like me, any of my chowhoundish friends, or any of the site regulars I knew, he grinned broadly and said "That's great!".

Idunno, man. It's like I'm this guy who took a shit once and got real lucky, and these geniuses were gonna apply fabulous smarts and take the brand and RUN with it. And they all had nothing. Like, zero. I hadn't expected much, but I was still shocked to discover that it was nothing but cocky, feckless clowns all the way down.