Brilliant. That’s all I can say about Adam Frucci’s post at Gizmodo on “Ten Reasons We’re Doomed: CES Edition.” Bloody brilliant. It describes every tech trade show I’ve ever been to. Some of my favourite highlights:
— “Are we so easy to manipulate that all it takes for us to decide that a product is worth writing about or purchasing are some out-of-work strippers in skimpy outfits handing out 64MB thumb drives? Yes!”
— “Cheesy fake game shows? Yes, that’ll make me take your company seriously. Magicians? Wow, I an optimistic about your company’s potential in the CE marketplace.”
— “We get suckered in to covering CES like it’s the second coming every year; we brought something like 14 people this time around. For what? So we can cover stuff we normally would pass on in hopes that we can get it up three minutes before Engadget.”
— “You can’t walk five feet on the show floor without hearing some horrible line of moronic marketing speak come out of the mouth of an overly perky 5-foot-tall PR girl in a pantsuit, and it makes me want to stab myself in the ears.”
I would imagine there are dozens — perhaps even hundreds — of bloggers and journalists who went through the Sodom and Gomorrah that is CES and are thinking exactly the same things as Frucci. Well said, Adam. Slate has a slightly more erudite version of the same idea.