Oppugn.us

By Zed A. Shaw

Remember this name: Ariel M. Stallings.

The story goes like this. I was bored one day so I turn on my computer and go to hacker news to check out what's going on. Right away I see on the front page some story about some recruiting site being done by Microsoft called "Microspotting".

Now, for years I've kind of felt sorry for Microsoft. They're perceived as being bumbling idiots in the tech world but honestly compared to many of their competitors they probably produce more interesting and better tech. For example, what OS has Google created? From scratch? Multiple times? What programming languages has Google created? What virtual machine did they create? How many hardware platforms runs that OS they actually didn't make? How many applications run on that OS they didn't make?

Exactly. When it comes down to it, Microsoft kicks the shit out of Google in the "hardcore tech shit" department, but they never get credit for it. Google is the classic post-modern tech company, borrowing and stealing anything that ain't nailed down barely making anything new on their own. Microsoft at least makes a large amount of its own tech, and don't give me that shit about a few things they bought or that one video company they screwed.

Well, of course that doesn't matter because programmers only see Microsoft so totally fucking up their image with bullshit corporate marketing and horribly weird decisions. Rather than talking about how Microsoft is one of the last companies you can be paid to work on programming languages or operating systems, they want to create completely astroturfed bullshit websites like Microspotting in a pathetic attempt to look cool.

What was Microspotting you ask?

Microspotting was this "blog" that Microsoft made in an attempt to look cool. They astroturfed the shit out of it, probably hiring some big mega marketing firm to do it badly. It had weird pictures, and claimed to follow geeks around like they were rock stars with statements such as, "Like the paparazzi, but for geeks!" Sure the employees interviewed were probably legit, but the main editor, Ariel M. Stallings, was totally made up.

UPDATE

Turns out, she is real although still doesn't remove the astroturf level all over the original site and how well engineered it was to appear like a real blog when it was just a marketroid site.

I'm reading these stories and saying to myself:

Self, this is fucking retarded.

Then I go back to hackernews and I see all these microsoft boosters talking about how it was such a moving story that this guy Zeke used to pump gas (Zeke is actually a cool dude though). I'm watching my fellow geeks get sucked into this totally trumped up bullshit and then say to my self:

Self, it's time to have some fun.

You see, remember that name "Ariel M. Stallings"? She was the supposed "person" doing the blog. You know, like Ariel MS, kind of like the fucking font. Yes, there was many many other clues, but for me the coincidence that this person's name just happened to be almost exactly like the classically Microsoft font in some subversive hidden way was just too much.

This is the part where I tell you to go learn to write. Learn to write well my friends and learn to write logically, emotionally, idiotically, and fantastically. Any way that gets your point across and changes people's opinion will benefit you immensely. Because what I did next and the end result was just about the funniest easiest thing ever, but I would have never been able to do it without learning to write and constantly work on it.

Immediately I rushed over to gandi and bought a parody domain Microturfing for $15. I then took the page that the Microsoft turfers on hackernews were mentioning and wrote a single fast little rip on it. I made it offensive but included as much parody and insight as a could. Timing was key, not quality of writing. I then got help from Ninh to do me up a parody logo so the whole page would match their page.

The end result was microturfing.com which in total cost me $15 and about 2 hours of very entertaining writing on a Weekend. An infinitesimal amount compared to what Microsoft paid for sure, and a hell of a lot more fun.

The result, in case you weren't there, was my page hit the front page of hackernews and several other sites knocking Microsoft's astroturf off. Of course the turfers and boosters immediately claimed they weren't astroturfing, even though it was fairly obvious. I kept my little secret about the Arial MS...I mean Ariel MS for today.

Because today my friends, today, I have a very big announcement.

My site microturfing.com is up while microspotting.com is down:

And looks like it's not coming back.

I may not be rich, and I may not have much, but I'll always have this.

Thanks Microsoft!

P.S. They also used javascript to kill the ghostery plugin so you couldn't see how they tracked you. Shady.