Max Read's discussions

I used to make a lot of guacamole with mango and mint instead of cilantro. I feel like you can put a lot of kinds of vegetables in guacamole and it’ll taste pretty good. Even peas. Just my opinion. Thanks.

Somber silliness is part of what made this show a Whole Thing last year, sure, but only a part, a third at best, and the other two pieces of the Triforce—Matthew McConaughey’s superhuman ability to make goofball nihilism sing and a credulous, super-jazzed online mob vying to conspiracy-theorize the whole shebang to… Read more

Good luck, James! You’ll be missed!

Of all the PGP public keys I've seen this is one of the best. Great work, Emma!

I think the hope is that the stunt exercise reveals exactly how hollow and merit-free Coke's idea was! Read more

Here's where I take issue. By generalizing about brands, and treating them as uniquely duplicitous organizations, we lose our ability to differentiate between good brands and bad brands. Worse, we lose the ability to encourage any kind of incremental progress, by identifying better social media campaigns that Coca… Read more

Hunh? You write as if consumers are drones who've lost the ability to define their own desires, their weak minds ridden with parasitic memes. You're insulting the very people whose well-being you purport to care for. Just because you're over the market economy, you won't easily persuade others who still aspire to its… Read more

Brands are shorthand reputations. Everybody has one, not just corporations. Think about yourself. You work for me; and I am a proud builder of media brands. Our journalism depends on technology and entertainment brands who covet our audience more than our docility. Your department's board has a blog presence,… Read more

If we're going to give Nick the benefit of the semi-facetious/point-making doubt, let's give Sam that same doubt, too. Read more

I mean, read the title of this post!

This essay will do nothing to dissuade lovers of sugary soft drinks, as your campaign against Uber did nothing to dissuade the drivers and passengers who embrace the online car service. Your default rage at the market economy is a brand strategy, for sure, but a niche one, with appeal limited to a narrow social class. Read more

New names such as Snapchat and Uber are becoming famous, faster even than the first generation of internet brands. And I remember one Millennial, a writer on Gizmodo, becoming rather attached to a drink called Four Loko, which is indeed still a brand, even if made more palatable by ironic branding and marginal status. Read more

Sam, you write for a brand within a brand within a brand. In fact, you are yourself a brand: puerile, nihilistic, infuriating, occasionally infuriatingly brilliant. As Simon Owens says: "Sam Biddle complaining about #brands is like a teenager decrying capitalism as his parents pay for his private school." Read more

First, consumer companies operate in public, and under the constant glare of media attention. When a brand's identity diverges too far from reality, journalists and other critics jump in to exploit the arbitrage. It's in your interest when brands stretch the truth, because that's information customers will click for,… Read more

Similarly, your argument, applied to marketing campaigns like Coca-Cola's nohaters tweet-to-graphic gimmick, could be made against all salesmanship, against even the slightest divergence between public and private personas. Read more

Your invective, while deployed against Coca-Cola, applies more broadly to all organizations. Groups, whether a company, a government department or a movement, take on a character and purpose of their own. They become businesses or guilds, with expectations and professional rules attached to them. And they reliably… Read more

Here's where I take issue. By generalizing about brands, and treating them as uniquely duplicitous organizations, we lose our ability to differentiate between good brands and bad brands. Worse, we lose the ability to encourage any kind of incremental progress, by identifying better social media campaigns that Coca… Read more

Of course, the temptation is to dismiss your brand-bashing essay as sophomoric attention-grabbing, playing to a gallery of a few hundred journalists on Twitter and a few hundred people you want to sleep with. My own motives are subject to obvious question: as the largest shareholder within Gawker Media, my wealth… Read more

...it's a great thing.