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Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1998 23:56:02 -0700
To: Amancio Hasty <hasty@rah.star-gate.com>, jgrosch@mooseriver.com
From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
Subject: Re: This just in: Microsoft/Sears Merger 
Cc: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com>,
        Drew Baxter <netmonger@genesis.ispace.com>,
        Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai <asmodai@wxs.nl>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG
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References: <Your message of "Sun, 20 Dec 1998 21:06:26 PST."             <19981220210626.B6129@mooseriver.com>
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At 10:38 PM 12/20/98 -0800, Amancio Hasty wrote:
 
>I guess the modern parents are not reading enough bed times stories to 
>their children 8)

Maybe not -- or folks aren't reading enough corporate press releases.
In order to look realistic, a corporate press release must be long-winded,
include quotes from executives, and be at least a page long. The
quote from Sears' CEO, is accurate, by the way; it's straight from
their corporate report. The Microsoft quotes are satirical, but
are (ironically) VERY close to things that Microsoft execs have
said.

That's part of the fun of these parodies. You start off looking absolutely
legit, with REAL QUOTES from the people who are supposedly involved. You
then try to engender a VERY gradual, creeping suspicion that something isn't 
right. 

When readers see the remark about Gates wanting a royalty from every
grocery order, they're supposed to think, "Yeah, that's in character, but 
I'm surprised he's admitting it." When they get to the bit about your fridge 
tattling on your diet to your insurance company, they're probably thinking,
"That's outrageous, but it's typical of what Microsoft's internal memos
reveal about its power-hungry, unscrupulous executives." The next paragraph 
goes farther over the top, and the one after that goes farther still.
Somewhere along the way, the reader is supposed to smell a rat.

At least that's the way I *try* to write these things. 

The big problem is that there are always a few people who swallow the first 
paragraph hook, line, and sinker and don't read farther. My April Fool's 
Day message claiming that the EFF had agreed to censorship of the Internet
engendered some angry flames from people who didn't read it all the
way through.

And that was even though the dateline said UPI (a dead giveaway).

--Brett


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