Comments on: "This is a bullshit marketing stunt"

"This is a bullshit marketing stunt"

Mezentian — Wed, 11 May 2016 04:45:09 -0800

When is revenge porn (a scourge of the Internet age) not revenge porn? When it's a terrible marketing stunt that misfires and you get accused of exploiting actual victims of revenge porn.

By: Mezentian

Mezentian — Wed, 11 May 2016 04:49:32 -0800

I deliberately didn't link or reference said band or their various websites (because, "Christ, what assholes") but in an era of gob-smackingly bad marketing decisions... even I thought it was a bad idea one could see from several AU off.

By: GenjiandProust

GenjiandProust — Wed, 11 May 2016 05:07:07 -0800

Honestly, just reading the FPP text is making me a little queasy. How could anyone think this would go well?

By: MeatLightning

MeatLightning — Wed, 11 May 2016 05:17:51 -0800

Another high point Unfortunately link-rot has set in but you can find the original source posts with a quick google search. A history of douchery it seems

By: Artw

Artw — Wed, 11 May 2016 05:44:09 -0800

I didn't know James O'Keefe had a band.

By: Etrigan

Etrigan — Wed, 11 May 2016 05:44:54 -0800

When you're coming up with a marketing stunt and you don't run it by your marketing people at all, that should be your first hint that you might not be doing a good marketing stunt. It's one thing to go against their advice, but these assholes (apparently) didn't even bother to ask.

By: beerperson

beerperson — Wed, 11 May 2016 05:46:37 -0800

I didn't know James O'Keefe had a band. No don't worry incredibly horrible rape-culture dickheaded victim exploitation is by no means limited to a small handful of people.

By: adept256

adept256 — Wed, 11 May 2016 05:47:04 -0800

I've never heard of these people, and backed the fuck out as soon as I read their name. Thanks for keeping it off the frontpage. I vote we avoid it entirely in this thread. I'm trying to use a find/replace script, but I honestly can't think of a name deserving enough. I've got it. 'Burger Urge'. An addiction themed burger place that sent novelty syringe pens to a homeless shelter. It's that level of PR brainlessness.

By: Mezentian

Mezentian — Wed, 11 May 2016 06:15:37 -0800

An addiction themed burger place that sent novelty syringe pens to a homeless shelter. It's that level of PR brainlessness. uBlock stops me reading that, but... unless that was a mass mail drop, man.... that's some bad Juju. (I have lived near an addiction centre, as neighbours they sucked, but I can't imagine choosing to have an addiction themed burger place *and* deciding to go with blat-worthy pens, so....I guess the addicts suck less?)

By: Mezentian

Mezentian — Wed, 11 May 2016 06:21:49 -0800

I just want to thank the mods for pre-emptively putting in the quote marks I deleted (from the Guardian link). They do Grodd's work.

By: JimBennett

JimBennett — Wed, 11 May 2016 06:23:32 -0800

I was pretty sure it was a hoax immediately, a bunch of indie musicians tweeted about it with photos of YACHT from the alleged tape, which seemed odd to me, plus there was no actual evidence of the video online except for YACHT's own site. there's a good overview of all that here. this hoax was not airtight at all if you were paying a minor amount of attention. it's pretty telling that the every major music site posted a story taking the sex tape at face value. none of these sites did any reporting whatsoever, including the bare minimum of trying to buy the video from the band (which would have resulted in a server error). vice is literally the only outlet that looked into this at all, and only because half the band works for vice! it's absolutely maddening how lazy and useless most pop culture journalism is these days. i was really, really hoping this was the point that YACHT was trying to make. the fact that their response was basically "we didn't think this through" is unbelievably disappointing. YACHT has made some good pop music but are not as clever as they think they are.

By: idiopath

idiopath — Wed, 11 May 2016 06:30:20 -0800

"This was not designed to make money or sell records, but to explore the intersection of privacy, media, and celebrity,"

I, too, know many words from artist statements, and am capable of combining them freely.

By: Mezentian

Mezentian — Wed, 11 May 2016 06:37:54 -0800

So you say "artists" should consider the intersectionality between context, reality and stupidity and capitalism? Sure.

By: Mezentian

Mezentian — Wed, 11 May 2016 06:41:55 -0800

it's absolutely maddening how lazy and useless most pop culture journalism is these days. If you don't know how the sausage is made, don't eat free hot dogs. In the defense of journalism: people say stuff, it can be disproved, and who wants to be called a fibber? In the modern environment that you, yes you, have created, where speed trumps all, it's a post and examine world. Blame media owners, sure, but blame the consumers too... and the demands of the speed of the media cycle, where journalists and bloggers are underpaid, under-resourced and unsupported to All The Kings Men this shit. Everyone is the worst.

By: adept256

adept256 — Wed, 11 May 2016 06:45:16 -0800

And they're not showing much contrition. Just 'sorry we were misunderstood'. We may have found Trump's running mate.

By: theraflu

theraflu — Wed, 11 May 2016 06:48:01 -0800

I find it interesting how quickly common discourse on this topic has changed in the last decade. We now live in a time and culture where it's reasonable to discuss a sex tape using the expression "revenge porn". The members of YACHT, being in their mid-thirties, are from a weirder time in the early/mid-2ks in which sex tapes were thought of as little more than a funny viral trend among celebrities. This seemed like terrible, ham-handed culture jamming from people out of their element. I'm sure this has been a learning experience for them. I still like their music

By: fungible

fungible — Wed, 11 May 2016 06:53:43 -0800

I've known YACHT in the past and they've been nothing but cool. They licensed us tracks for a movie I worked on about poor LGBT youth for dirt cheap. But yeah this is a big fuckup. I guess I would just say people do stupid shit sometimes, and it's a bit presumptive to say they're Cosby or Trump level assholes just because they did a bad thing once.

By: octobersurprise

octobersurprise — Wed, 11 May 2016 06:55:47 -0800

I've never heard of these people See Mystery Lights wasn't half bad poppy disco-y stuff. But that was like way back in 2009. I've never heard anything else by them. Possibly, they've been working on this stunt since then. I am chuffed to see that the NME is quoting Kim Kardashian's take on this because that's the only thing this story lacked.

By: grumpybear69

grumpybear69 — Wed, 11 May 2016 07:01:35 -0800

The real misstep on their part was framing the video as a violation of their agency. Nobody ever reacts well to being duped into sympathy.

By: urbanwhaleshark

urbanwhaleshark — Wed, 11 May 2016 07:14:17 -0800

"one morally abject person" So describing themselves and making me not give a shit. This is one instance where I like advertising.

By: panglos

panglos — Wed, 11 May 2016 07:17:22 -0800

Nobody ever reacts well to being duped into sympathy. Yeah, I think that's where it turned the corner too. It's a shame they didn't stop at, "parody sex tape where the participants shed their skin and become aliens instead of having sex," which IMO is hilarious. Maybe they'll release it later as the video to their new single, "Bullshit Marketing Stunt."

By: furnace.heart

furnace.heart — Wed, 11 May 2016 07:20:21 -0800

My paths have intermittently crossed with both those kids going on a decade, and they've always been on the periphery of one of my social groups. In my contact with both of them, they've been incredibly respectful (current situation excluded perhaps), friendly people, and really nice. Like, really nice folk. This doesn't feel like some pattern of discourse they engage in; they tried to make some art crossed with a marketing stunt, in the context of their musical careers. And, it was ill conceived and they fucked up. I really hope they're genuinely sorry. I wish their explanation was an apology, because yes, they fucked up. And while I think they fucked up, I really don't think that makes them bad people, because its pretty rare to see generous, friendly, nice people turn into bad people. I think the big mark against them is that they've not issued what seems to be a genuine apology. I've had really bad, accidentally offensive ideas at work, and I'm just lucky my work isn't a public facing one.

By: dylanjames

dylanjames — Wed, 11 May 2016 07:22:00 -0800

When Yacht was a one-man-band, a brief moment of fame was when he admitted to pirating all of his music software. He apologized, and the world moved on. Their move to LA has mostly been good for them (as far as I can tell), but this seems to be the result of that bad judgement we had a glimpse of, combined with one way LA is deeply unhealthy. Sigh. I like much of their pop music, and wish them well.

By: lmfsilva

lmfsilva — Wed, 11 May 2016 07:29:31 -0800

Heh. Cut them off from festivals and gigs for a while for, as grumpybear69 said, duping people into sympathy. Then remind every outlet that reported this as face value and adding a couple of paragraphs between sections of the original press release and a couple of tweets isn't "reporting".

By: The Devil Tesla

The Devil Tesla — Wed, 11 May 2016 07:42:26 -0800

My favorite part of this is that they were trying to make a point about celebrity sex tapes but they weren't famous enough to be celebrities. I'm not sure why their apology was so strained. They meant to fuck with the kind of people who download sex tapes, and instead ended up accidentally generating an outpouring a sympathy, making those people out to be fools. Pranks only work when the behavior your targeting is wrong or ridiculous in some way, and when you fuck up a prank just apologize! People will get over it. Instead they're taking some kind of a cartoon villain stance, and while they deserve shit for this they're going to get more than they deserve.

By: octobersurprise

octobersurprise — Wed, 11 May 2016 07:48:25 -0800

Cut them off from festivals and gigs ... Shunned at Coachella! Rebuffed at Bonnaroo! Snubbed at All Tomorrow's Parties!

By: Mezentian

Mezentian — Wed, 11 May 2016 07:55:28 -0800

The members of YACHT, being in their mid-thirties, are from a weirder time in the early/mid-2ks in which sex tapes were thought of as little more than a funny viral trend among celebrities. T Mid'30s. That is totally: don't film it if you don't want to see it territory.

By: adept256

adept256 — Wed, 11 May 2016 08:05:40 -0800

That is totally: don't film it if you don't want to see it territory. People make such films because they want see it. Do you mean if you don't want it to be leaked? Because that's like saying don't own a house if you don't want to be burgled.

By: lmfsilva

lmfsilva — Wed, 11 May 2016 08:07:43 -0800

Shunned at Coachella! Rebuffed at Bonnaroo! Snubbed at All Tomorrow's Parties! Well, the alternative could well be "bottled at Reading".

By: Mezentian

Mezentian — Wed, 11 May 2016 08:11:56 -0800

People make such films because they want see it. Do you mean if you don't want it to be leaked? Yes. I am of the film era, not the digital age. The new era confuses me.

By: Parasite Unseen

Parasite Unseen — Wed, 11 May 2016 08:35:14 -0800

YACHT did a stupid, thoughtless thing, but this whole won't even say their name in the FPP angle is absurd. They're not Voldemort. We use the names of spree shooters when we discuss them; it won't stain our souls to use the name of a band that created a shitty publicity stunt. I wouldn't say that I've been a YACHT fan, exactly, but I've liked their music when I've encountered it. I've mostly heard it when outside and intoxicated, and that seems like the audience that they've been pursuing, and I'm generally for that (I'm of the opinion that music for when you're outside and intoxicated is one of humanity's oldest and most vital forms of cultural expression). I'm attending an event next month that I was planning to attend anyway, but had a positive reaction when I saw that they'd be there as well. Less so now, as I imagine any performance they give is going to be a mess for the foreseeable future. My girlfriend saw them at a festival a couple of years ago, and they came out into the audience and danced with everyone. Some rando in the audience started feeling on Claire Evans, and when a nearby woman objected, Claire said that it was ok for people to molest her, and Jona Bechtolt said that the same went for him. While there's not, strictly speaking, anything wrong with that, it's not indicative of a band whose values align with MetaFilter's. So, yeah, this was a deeply stupid decision on their part, and they brought enough people in on the hoax that I find it bizarre that no one stopped them.

By: Etrigan

Etrigan — Wed, 11 May 2016 08:39:59 -0800

YACHT did a stupid, thoughtless thing, but this whole won't even say their name in the FPP angle is absurd. They're not Voldemort. We use the names of spree shooters when we discuss them; it won't stain our souls to use the name of a band that created a shitty publicity stunt. I have long advocated using "That Asshole" for murderous assholes, so I'm okay with "These Assholes". But really, the all-caps name is just slightly more bullshit on top of the bullshit stunt.

By: acb

acb — Wed, 11 May 2016 08:49:31 -0800

YACHT are somewhere between late-period Boing Boing, VICE Magazine and something out of a hypothetical LA-set American remake of Nathan Barley: they're ostensibly artists commenting on controversial issues, but they do so in a way that leaves them, and the audience, complicit. The line between criticism and exploitation is consistently blurred in their work. Take, for example, their album of last year, I Thought The Future Would Be Cooler. The concept is one of technological terriblisma, albeit it is as if spun by a hip marketing agency: they mash up everything from the Snowden revelations to obnoxious ads and lame USB-powered crapgadgets into one We Didn't Start The Fire-style rant about how, well, the technological age kinda sucks, in a nonspecific way that will appeal to everyone. Then there was their a marketing tie-in with Uber, where their album was streamable whenever surge pricing was in force. So yes, it's criticism (Uber sucks/is exploitative), but also a marketing tie-in, because that's how late capitalism rolls. Which is well fucking SugaRAPE. And now there's this.

By: octobersurprise

octobersurprise — Wed, 11 May 2016 08:54:22 -0800

really, the all-caps name is just slightly more bullshit on top of the bullshit stunt. Eh. They aren't the first band/company/person to insist on a particular stylized form of a name and I doubt they'll be the last. But I don't think you have to approve of their stunt—or even them—to think that complaining about their name is entering "bitch eating cookies" territory.

By: rewil

rewil — Wed, 11 May 2016 09:04:16 -0800

At least this one seems to be in-part acronym based and isn't solely "mimic my typography branding for me."

By: acb

acb — Wed, 11 May 2016 09:04:52 -0800

Stupid people think it's cool, smart people think it's funny, also cool.

By: furnace.heart

furnace.heart — Wed, 11 May 2016 09:17:39 -0800

really, the all-caps name is just slightly more bullshit on top of the bullshit stunt. Its a freaking acronym for Young Americans Challenging High Technology. It's as much bullshit as any band name, if you're going to go for that metric.

By: 41swans

41swans — Wed, 11 May 2016 09:49:41 -0800

The concept is one of technological terriblisma (I quickly deteriorate and turn to dust, like in Indiana Jones.)

By: straight

straight — Wed, 11 May 2016 09:54:59 -0800

it's pretty telling that the every major music site posted a story taking the sex tape at face value. none of these sites did any reporting whatsoever, including the bare minimum of trying to buy the video from the band (which would have resulted in a server error). vice is literally the only outlet that looked into this at all, and only because half the band works for vice! it's absolutely maddening how lazy and useless most pop culture journalism is these days. I have a real hard time faulting a news outlet for not saying, "Your sex tape was leaked and you've asked people not to violate your privacy by watching it? I need to download that video and 'verify the story' if-you-know-what-I-mean."

By: wemayfreeze

wemayfreeze — Wed, 11 May 2016 10:35:05 -0800

They posted this follow up apology about an hour ago on Facebook:

First off, we're sorry. The reaction to this endeavor highlights a glaring error we made in positioning ourselves as the victims of a leaked sex tape. We understand that positioning it that way from the beginning was an egregious mistake, and are so ashamed we hadn't considered this beforehand. Yes, this was all a "hoax" or "PR stunt," and one we were so excited to share. While there is inherent deception in pulling a hoax, it was never our intention to mock or make light of anyone who has been a victim of a privacy violation like the one we mentioned. This was a lazy starting point for what we wanted to be a much more fun story about the expectations of a sex tape and the frenzy surrounding the taboo of sex, especially juxtaposed with our own non-celebrity. We failed to tell that story. Instead we told a much darker and more disturbing story. We've been going back and forth on what to do about the music video this was all supposed to lead up to. We were leaning towards not releasing it at all, but we think it's important that people be able to see and assess for themselves our intent. So here it is: https://www.facebook.com/JashNetwork/videos/1145980565466351/ We take full responsibility for what has happened, and we are truly sorry. We know we've broken a bond of trust with many of our fans and friends. Thank you to those that called us out and helped us to understand the gravity of the mistake we made. We should not have hinged this entire project on the fiction that we were the victims of a leaked tape, and we're equally disappointed in ourselves for taking so long to get over being shocked at the response and write this apology. After all is said and done, of course you should be mad at us. We're mad at us too. Love, Jona & Claire PS: We're sorry for our shitty non-apology yesterday, too. There's no justifying it. We clearly didn't get it then. We get it now.

By: Etrigan

Etrigan — Wed, 11 May 2016 10:38:45 -0800

They posted this follow up apology about an hour ago on Facebook: 9.8/10 (0.2 off for linking to the video), which is a damn sight better than most.

By: adept256

adept256 — Wed, 11 May 2016 10:44:57 -0800

I'm taking notes. We all do dumb stuff and need forgiveness and redemption sometimes. I might give them a listen now. If their songs are as pitch perfect as that apology they must be alright.

By: wemayfreeze

wemayfreeze — Wed, 11 May 2016 10:49:40 -0800

I used to be a huge YACHT fan, less so now (more because I've moved on than anything about their music). They put on a killer show and are generally culturally and politically angled in a way I resonate with. I definitely recommend checking them out. Here's a cover of Prince's Annie Christian that they released after his death. It's great (and finds something so good in what is a bit of a curveball in its original form).

By: bongo_x

bongo_x — Wed, 11 May 2016 11:18:03 -0800

This isn't just a publicity stunt for the band, they were selling the video, which they completely and willfully misrepresented. That's another full step toward jackassery. Put me in the "he's always acted like a jackass" column. It's entirely possible he's a very nice guy. He should stop acting like a jackass then.

By: lmfsilva

lmfsilva — Wed, 11 May 2016 11:33:10 -0800

Their actual apology seems honest. I have a real hard time faulting a news outlet for not saying, "Your sex tape was leaked and you've asked people not to violate your privacy by watching it? I need to download that video and 'verify the story' if-you-know-what-I-mean." It's not like they couldn't, you know, google if there was any other indications of it's existence, which apparently weren't any other than a few tweets from musicians that were "in" on it after the story was posted. If they planted some leads - blurry screenshots from a not-new account in a porn subreddit asking "who are these? they are hot", other later asking in a indie music subreddit "uh, I found this browsing imgur, isn't this Jona and Claire from YACHT?", and then their FB post, I could see a credible narrative building up for a story. It wouldn't make the stunt less of a shitty thing to do, but almost immediately people were already finding holes in the story nobody in the news outlets bothered to consider because hey, click click click referral click media engagements. There were options that didn't include searching the red light district of the internet and jerk off to the tape (and being honest, I imagine most of them were already copy-pasting the story one-handed while listening to Radiohead). I doubt anyone even considered at least checking a second source if there was actually anything in this story.

By: mnsc

mnsc — Wed, 11 May 2016 12:51:15 -0800

This makes me wanna understand art, to be able to reason about artistic qualities of stuff. I can't decide if this is good art. It feels like it is. But I can't explain that feeling. I don't even know if "art" is a valid concept these days...

By: acb

acb — Wed, 11 May 2016 12:51:24 -0800

This isn't just a publicity stunt for the band, they were selling the video, which they completely and willfully misrepresented. AFAIK, there was no way to buy the video; the web site was configured to report an error when anyone tried to buy it.

By: jjwiseman

jjwiseman — Wed, 11 May 2016 13:00:54 -0800

This is one of those so over-the-top threads that it makes me question my general alignment with metafilter. Claire Evans, at least, seems to be a brilliant, thoughtful person and while I think this stunt was somewhat lame (I'll say I think there's a very wide gulf between what they did and exploiting revenge-porn victims), the name-calling and aggression in this thread should be embarrassing.

By: bongo_x

bongo_x — Wed, 11 May 2016 13:17:29 -0800

I don't know, I think there were several things they could have done that would have been in questionable taste (to say the least) but still defensible. Put the video out and let it circulate. Sell the video. The exact combination of things they did was pretty cringe inducing. I'm not quite the making the "exploiting revenge porn" connection as clearly as others are either. But what I am seeing is akin to "I have cancer, send me money", or "I was just robbed, send me money". They announced that some terrible thing happened to them that turned out to be something they completely made up for attention (and money). Just because you call yourself an artist doesn't make everything you do excusable as art. Sometimes it's just a scam. An artist writing bad checks isn't art just because they say it is when they get caught.

By: bongo_x

bongo_x — Wed, 11 May 2016 13:20:55 -0800

I'm not even sure this was a marketing stunt gone wrong. It seems more likely they wanted to sell a sex video and didn't think it would go over with the fans so they made up this story to cover themselves.

By: straight

straight — Wed, 11 May 2016 13:26:07 -0800

There were options that didn't include searching the red light district of the internet and jerk off to the tape...I doubt anyone even considered at least checking a second source if there was actually anything in this story. Sure, that's probably the best thing to do, but I'm still not going to criticize people whose first impulse is not to be skeptical of someone claiming to be a victim of this kind of privacy violation.

By: wemayfreeze

wemayfreeze — Wed, 11 May 2016 13:34:25 -0800

It seems more likely they wanted to sell a sex video and didn't think it would go over with the fans so they made up this story to cover themselves. There is no sex video.

By: bongo_x

bongo_x — Wed, 11 May 2016 13:41:33 -0800

My mistake. I thought one of the articles mentioned seeing it.

By: lmfsilva

lmfsilva — Wed, 11 May 2016 14:20:48 -0800

Sure, that's probably the best thing to do, but I'm still not going to criticize people whose first impulse is not to be skeptical of someone claiming to be a victim of this kind of privacy violation. The first and only impulse here should have been "this is not music related and a is personal matter within the band, should we really cover this?" and has nothing to do with "not believing the victim". Occasionally I see bands posting about crappy things that happen - guitars broken in transport, stolen gear, being with the flu and so on. Funny how the story they picked up is about a juicy sex tape. So yeah, you might not want to criticize based their first impulses, but you might want to question their judgement regardless.

By: bongo_x

bongo_x — Wed, 11 May 2016 14:50:26 -0800

Oh, I see, it was fake reports of people saying they watched it. Man, I was completely hung up on the selling the video part, and still am even though they didn't actually sell it. Because now I can't figure out what that even had to do with it. What does setting up a fake portal and announcing sales add other than pissing people off even more? You now have an email list of people who think you're an ass and are wondering about their credit card information (Yeah, I know it was Stripe). The trying to elicit sympathy part was bad enough. "We released [the sex tape] as a slowly-unveiling conspiracy, inspired in equal part by The X-Files, Nathan for You, and The KLF." Please do not bring the KLF into this. You obviously don't understand what you're doing. And don't understand the meaning of the phrase "slowly unveiling". I love stupid pranks. I am the target audience for stupid pranks. They are really bad at this. They had finally reached a point where most internet searches about them did not point to articles about what an ass that guy is. They fixed that problem.

By: lmfsilva

lmfsilva — Wed, 11 May 2016 15:14:15 -0800

I love stupid pranks. I am the target audience for stupid pranks. I'd make a sextape prank by setting mood for five minutes for real, but then cutting to someone sitting nearby in a monkey suit writing on a smartphone while gently fondling the crotch area . But I love terrible puns.

By: acb

acb — Wed, 11 May 2016 16:13:28 -0800

Maybe living in LA has turned them into instances of Erich Fromm's Marketing Character, profoundly superficial compulsive self-promoters?

By: jenfullmoon

jenfullmoon — Wed, 11 May 2016 17:40:48 -0800

I don't get why this sounded like a good idea to anybody. Or as was pointed out later, they're not famous enough for people to care about their imaginary sex tape.

By: bologna on wry

bologna on wry — Wed, 11 May 2016 20:26:26 -0800

Well, I'll say this - if the end goal was general publicity at any cost, then, well, they win. Because I, for one, had no idea who the hell YACHT was before this story broke.

By: Devils Rancher

Devils Rancher — Wed, 11 May 2016 21:11:48 -0800

Really, just spell the name right, please.

By: acb

acb — Thu, 12 May 2016 03:22:18 -0800

YACHT, exploitation and complicity, a blog piece. </selfpromotion>

By: lmfsilva

lmfsilva — Thu, 12 May 2016 07:33:44 -0800

Let's see: The KLF came up with a formula for gaming the pop industry, used it to score a hit, then when invited onto Top Of The Pops, got shock-metal band Extreme Noise Terror to play with them, and poured buckets of pig's blood onto the audience A bit of fact checking: BRIT Awards, not ToTP - The Manual (and The Timelords) happened in 1988, while they were invited for the Brits in 1992 for the success of The White Room in 1991, and Drummond shot blanks into the audience, as lawyers advised against the pig blood stunt, but still left a lamb on the doorstep of the official after party. Their ToTP presences as far as I remember were regular "we know we're pretending to play" nonsense.

By: bitteschoen

bitteschoen — Thu, 12 May 2016 09:46:33 -0800

Well if they really wanted to follow in the footsteps of the KLF, here's a marketing ploy they could try that would be very useful to them at this stage: 5. After Joy Division's singer Ian Curtis committed suicide and their sales exploded, Drummond set about trying to get Echo singer Ian McCulloch to kill himself. He then adjusted his aims to getting 'Mac' to disappear for a few months before magically popping back out, thus still bolstering sales. Bill's still holding out that Richey from the Manic Street Preachers went for the same ploy.

By: Mezentian

Mezentian — Fri, 13 May 2016 03:56:05 -0800

Well if they really wanted to follow in the footsteps of the KLF, here's a marketing ploy they could try that would be very useful to them at this stage: If I thought that was true, I'd hate the KLF more than I do. 30 seconds of googling tells me, it isn't. But, you know, the KLF had one good song, E&TB many. Not sure who burnt the most money, mind.

By: lmfsilva

lmfsilva — Fri, 13 May 2016 07:16:34 -0800

There's also this beautiful ode to Julian Cope.