T-Shirt Hell Claims It Will Shut Doors After One Too Many Hate Emails | Hacker News Reader

T-Shirt Hell Claims It Will Shut Doors After One Too Many Hate Emails

techcrunch.com

70 pointspclark36 comments

I don't particularly understand why he would care if he gets hate mail or not.

Actually, scratch that. Hate mail means he's achieving his goal, ergo making more money.

Clearly, this is trickery. Trickery, I say.

Hope it's trickery, but he did almost shut down once before due to a more-credible-than-usual threat of violence. I'll have to get my "May the Horse Be With You" shirt framed in an oxygen-free case with uv-blocking glass.

I imagine it takes a toll. It's easy to say "Don't listen to them, they don't get it." It's harder to actually ignore constant hate mail.

Yeah, but for someone explicitly trying to push the limits of good taste? Isn't offending people the whole point?

Agreed. And most the time the people that are offended are the outraged people who always like to be outraged about something.

I find it kind of distressing that I can easily imagine someone resorting to physical violence against someone wearing (or in this case, making) t-shirts slogans they don't agree with.

Also, it's cool to see someone who cares enough about their business to be willing to forego any monetary gain by selling it off to someone else.

If you really want to push the envelope all the time AND you can't deal with mild email-based criticism then yes, you should shut down.

there's mild email-based criticism, and then there's "Your wife's name is XXXX and she works at ______. Shut down your site or else."

Somehow I was expecting to see a shirt that says:

"Ghandi Wouldn't Fucking Trade Places With You Or Matt Maroon"

I never looked at T-Shirt Hell before this, but they've got some incredible ones.

"Slavery gets shit done"

"Women are like parking spots. They're whores and liars."

I wish I'd known about this store before. These are hilarious.

Eh. I think they're childish. This guy enables real-world trolls, and somehow is surprised that people respond negatively.

It's not trolling, it's shock. When you wear something unexpected, then it's a lot funnier and more effective. Nowadays, offense is the most shocking thing there is.

Not to say this is as good as A Modest Proposal, but wouldn't you say that suggesting people in Ireland sell babies as food is a similar thing? I wouldn't call that trolling. I'd call it satire.

EDIT: The reason it isn't trolling is that you have to put your name behind it. One of the essential elements of trolling is that what you say can't be tied back to you whatsoever. The minute you say it with your own name, it's not trolling. It's an offensive statement made by an actual person.

Hey, wear whatever you want, sell whatever t-shirt you want, no sweat off my back. This kind of humor is cheap, and possibly hurtful. If you're cool with that, it's your business.

I've never heard that trolling had to be anonymous by definition, and I've been kicking around the internet for 15 years or so. Trolls aim to be deliberately disruptive, and if you're in public wearing a shirt with any of the slogans on TSH, then you are aiming to be disruptive. One reaps what one sows.

ps - I'm watching our points go up & down depending on who agrees with us. It's kind of amusing.

Yeah, I like watching the debate swirl around stuff like this. It's fascinating stuff.

Trolls aren't the only people who're disruptive. It depends on intent. Trolls do it just to cause pain. But if you get that shirt primarily to shock people into a new way of thinking, then it's not trolling. For instance, I'm considering getting the "slaves get shit done" shirt I mentioned. I don't typically wear shocking shirts, but I thought that one was genuinely funny. The point of wearing a shirt like that wouldn't be offending people. It would be to slowly make these more controversial topics (slavery humor, foul language) acceptable in the mainstream. It raises the question of what's acceptable to wear on clothing. My view is everything goes, and I figure that getting a shirt like that might help spread the message.

Cheap? I dunno. Some of the jokes are, some are legitimately clever. Yeah, they're all shocking, but some are shocking in the way that "Rednecks", the Randy Newman song, are. (That song is sung from the point of view of some rednecks "keepin' the niggers down"; some people miss that the point of the song is that stereotyping against rednecks is just as bad as stereotyping black people.)

But I guess it's a matter of taste. Fun discussion, either way.

I thought anonymity was why trolling was/is so prevalent.

Anonymity may be why it's so prevalent on the internet, but it's not a prerequisite.

What's the difference between trolling and satire, then? Where's it stop becoming a social statement and start becoming a case of merely provoking argument thoughtlessly?

That's not what "trolling" means. See http://www.curezone.com/forums/troll.asp or http://captaininfinity.us/rightloop/alttrollFAQ.htm for more details.

A classic CureZone troll is trying to make us believe that he is a genuine skeptic with no hidden agenda. He is divisive and argumentative with need-to-be-right attitude, "searching for the truth", flaming discussion, and sometimes insulting people or provoking people to insult him. Troll is usually an expert in reusing the same words of its opponents and in turning it against them.

That's not the same as wearing a shirt and saying, "I get why you'd think it's offensive, but I think it's funny, and it's my right to wear this shirt."

There may be people who wear T-Shirt Hell shirts because they think they're funny instead of because they want to offend people and get a reaction, but that's not germane to the question of whether anonymity is one of the essential elements of trolling. It isn't.

genius marketing campaign

Indeed - this seems like the first time I've read a "We're closing down" press release that included the fact that they were bringing back MORE products for sale.

Oh hey, did you hear? The McRib is back!

...again!

My crystal press release ball says, "March 1, 2009--Thanks to all loyal fans, we're back! And we're telling all our haters to fuck off! [...]"

Simply making offensive statements doesn't count as social commentary.

Some of the shirts are very clever.

If there were a TechCrunch that covered TechCrunch they would dump out a headline focusing on the closer- "Arrington announces he is going to shut down TechCrunch".

Surely the best 'fuck you' would be to sell for millions. Closing the company will make the people who hate him happy - I say he's staying open...

What's next, "I'm Not an Asshole if I Blog that I'm Not an Asshole"?

Is Zed Shaw his ghost writer?

Zed Shaw wouldn't write something like that, it'd be a tenth of the size and filled with 60% more expletives and claims of awesomeness.

...along with some amount of actual awesomeness.

...don't forget to add the "middle finger to the rails comumnity"

Zed Shaw is so awesome he has two middle fingers on his left hand. Both of them have 'Rails' tatooed on them.

That's why he plays left handed guitar.

I think the guy should have just hired a few people to go through his hate email daily and respond to everything.

The other half of the website's ingenuity could have been intelligent responses to senseless bantering.

He announced one too many times how much money he had made. To me this just screams "I didn't make very much money." Which I'm going to hazard a guess is the real reason he's shutting down.

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