GoDaddy buys Media Temple and I lose my mind

I was checking my email this afternoon, all unsuspecting, and suddenly this crap bomb appeared in my inbox from my web hosting provider Media Temple:

I am proud to share some momentous news with you today. GoDaddy, the Internet’s largest platform for small businesses, has acquired (mt) Media Temple. We will continue operating as an independent and autonomous company and our mission will remain unchanged. However, new investments from GoDaddy will provide us the necessary resources to strengthen our focus on web professionals and will help accelerate our plans to expand internationally.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you surely have seen GoDaddy’s incredibly sexist ad campaigns. But here’s a nice refresher course for you, just the same:

Ms. Magazine: Top Five Sexist Super Bowl Ads, 2013

The Moderate Voice: GoDaddy: Poster Child For Silicon Valley Sexism

Geek Feminism Wiki: Go Daddy’s advertising

Miss Representation: #NotBuyingIt: Go Daddy Disappoints, Again

GoDaddy has also been critiqued for really terrible user interfaces and “dark patterns” – a user interface designed to trick you into doing something or buying something that you didn’t want or intend. Read more about some GoDaddy’s dark patterns tricks.

I actually had 12 domains registered with GoDaddy from really early on. I never hosted files on their servers, but when their domains were $3 and $5 a year, I registered quite a few of them. This was before all the horrible sexist advertising and before the dark patterns took over their interfaces. Once they started their terrible ad campaigns, I began moving my domain registrations, but unfortunately it wasn’t as easy to do as I had hoped. I had purchased some of my domain names under an email address I no longer had. When I changed emails, I updated all of my contact addresses for each individual URL. But unbeknownst to me – this is an example of one of their dark patterns – those changes didn’t also apply to the privacy settings on those URLs. So when that address when away, I couldn’t turn off the privacy settings in order to move the domains to a new domain provider. I finally found the log in numbers to the privacy accounts by searching on an ancient backup drive I put in the closet 6 years ago, and was able to update my privacy information in order to move, but it took me months to get it sorted out. So I was GoDaddy-free, finally!

I hate you fucking people.

Annnnnd now I’m back. I host 12 sites on Media Temple architecture. I’m going to be moving them sometime this spring, unfortunately. So far, Dreamhost, Digital Ocean and Pair.com are front-runners for new hosting providers. We shall see.

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Do you have the right kind of wife for it?

Volkswagen Bus Ad
Volkswagen Bus Ad

Ad Copy:

Can your wife bake her own bread?
Can she get a kid’s leg stitched and not phone you at the office until it’s all over?
Find something to talk about when the TV set goes on the blink?
Does she worry about the Bomb?
Make your neighbor’s children wish she were their mother?
Will she say “Yes” to a camping trip after 50 straight weeks worth of cooking?
Let your daughter keep a pet snake in the back yard?
Invite 13 people to dinner even though she only has service for 12?
Name a cat “Rover?”
Live another year without furniture and take a trip to Europe instead?
Let you give up your job with a smile?
And mean it?
Congratulations

Wow, I don’t even know where to begin with this shit – If you can’t hold your job, why should she get your kid stitches without calling you, or cook for you for 50 weeks in a row? Maybe she has her own job and you should consider baking the bread, fella. Maybe she doesn’t want to be a mom, let alone the mother figure for the neighbor’s kids, too.

This just proves that even liberal hippie dudes were total douche-bags back in the 1960s.

Props on the bitchin’ ride, though; that rocks. And the “daughter with a snake” thing, and the cat name Rover. That’s all cool.

Continue ReadingDo you have the right kind of wife for it?

Sarah Haskins – Target Women: Chocolate

Usually, the point of Target: Women is to highlight how inane and absurd advertising targeted to women is — pointing out where ads insult women’s intelligence and where they try to create an artificial demand for stuff we don’t really want or need. The problem is in the case of chocolate, I actually DO want to eat chocolate. So this was a funny video, but at the same time, I was watching the microwave brownie commercial and thinking “ooooo, I want that!”

Continue ReadingSarah Haskins – Target Women: Chocolate

links for 2008-02-20

Continue Readinglinks for 2008-02-20

Big Things Photos – Back up and Running

My “Big Things” photo galleries are back up and running, finally, after some coding goofiness. In going through all the new photos, I realized I have hundreds of new ones to put online; I’m further behind on this project than I thought. But I have much easier ways to get them online, so that’s good.

I’ll point new things as I get them on the site.

Mr. Bendo
Mr. Bendo

Big Things in Indianapolis

Indianapolis’ Lost Big Things

Big Things In Indianapolis — Inflatables

Big Things Around Indiana

Big Things in Muncie, Indiana

Big Things Around the U.S.A.

2001 Midwest Big Things Road Trip

2004 Visit to Dinosaurland in Virginia

2005 Big Things In Louisville, Kentucky

Coming soon: 332 new “Big Things” photos, including our Big Things Road Trip to Kansas, and this summer, our Route 66 Roadtrip to California.

Continue ReadingBig Things Photos – Back up and Running

links for 2006-08-02

Continue Readinglinks for 2006-08-02

Vote for Alan’s Movie

Stephanie’s friend Alan made a little movie for the Boston Market website movie contest, and they’ve asked me to request that you go vote for Alan’s movie, so he wins some cool stuff.
The premise of the movie is “My Extra Hour” — in which you show what you’d do with the extra hour that getting dinner from Boston Market saves you.
Here are the instructions for how to vote for Alan’s movie —
“You click to watch the movies and a screen comes up — you click on the film reel for New Releases (or there’s a Quick Nav bar) and his is the one with a hand raised in the screen shot. To vote, there’s a set of stars to the right while the video is playing — you click on that. ”

Continue ReadingVote for Alan’s Movie