Let’s Talk About Marketing

And how it’s all that is wrong with this country

This blog and everything that may come of it is a labor of love, a passion project, and way of creating community and connectedness in a world that seems increasingly hostile to such things.

My original “marketing” plan, and the one I am going back to, involves printing business cards with the name of the blog and a qr code to an article and just leaving them random places for people to find. I’ve already designed a couple of cards of my own, that I will begin distributing soon.

But I also wanted it to be a reader engagement thing. In my fantasy, readers are inspired to create their own business card designs (there’s a dozen free apps and websites that allow you to do that) which they could then send to me, and I would get 100 cards printed in that design and mail them to said readers, who would then leave them places as they go about their lives. And so the word would spread.

If you are interested in spreading this blog, and feel a desire to create a little something of your own, please do design a business card or flyer. If you send a design to:

blog@uncannyfx.com

along with a reference to whichever post you want your design to link to and an address for delivery of the finished product, and I will send you 100 of them to distribute as you see fit.

Now on to the nitty gritty.

When I first started this blog, I was contacted by a guy in Louisiana named Mitchell deVillier, who claimed to be a retired marketing professional with a big idea for a political movement. He told me to read the collective works of George Lakoff, a linguist who wrote a bunch of books on political discourse around the turn of the century.

The books are good, from a linguistic perspective. They were very useful in polishing my writing skills. But the books are about how to talk about politics. They aren’t actually about politics. It’s a political strategy, not a political paradigm.

I did indeed see their value, and I told old Mitch that I was all in on changing political discourse in this country. And then I started trying to talk platforms and positions, because you can’t have a political movement without those things.

Turns out he doesn’t have any. His entire fucking plan is to go about telling people what George Lakoff said, while publishing dry and patronizing instruction manuals on “how to talk to conservatives.”

He doesn’t want to start a movement. He wants to start a cult.

But I still thought he had something of value, and I told him that I would help him with his thing—flesh it out into an *actual* movement—in exchange for some free help marketing my blog.

See, I thought marketing was spreading the word. Turns out marketing has nothing to do with methods of telling people you exist. It’s all about how to trick people into thinking your product is better than it is.

Normally it pisses me off that the AI program I use to create these images can’t spell, but this one cracks me up.

This asshole has a six-part pamphlet on “marketing strategies” that he wrote and claims he sold for thousands of dollars a pop. He probably did. Rich old white guys love to give lots of money to other old rich white guys for talking in circles and never saying anything.

Mitch deVillier is one of those guys who drives hard and fast and never gets any fucking where or produces anything of tangible value. And yet he was able to hoard enough money to retire at the age of 50, because in the United States of America bullshit matters more than results.

I read ONE of his six precious pamphlets. It made me see red.

In this little marketing thing that he claims is oh-so-valuable, old Mitch starts yammering about hiring a babysitter. Now, I have two kids. I know what to look for in a babysitter. I have no way of finding and contacting a good babysitter. But that’s what marketing is for, right?

Not according to this guy. See, according to old Mitch, you don’t hire a babysitter to take care of your kids. This dipshit actually said “what are you hiring when you hire a sitter? Is it her ability to do CPR, cook gourmet food, or teach French lessons? No, you’re hiring peace of mind.”

See, according to old Mitch, being a good babysitter isn’t about taking care of kids. Oh, no. That would be silly. According to Mitch, if you want people to hire you to care for your kids, you need to understand that “Instead, good performance is showing up a few minutes early, dressed appropriately, with an air of confidence. Good performance is sending “All is well” texts every 90 minutes or so to the parents. Good performance is leaving the kitchen cleaner than she found it.”

According to Mitch, to be a good babysitter, you need to clean the kitchen in a business suit and interrupt date night with pointless texts. Actually caring for the kids doesn’t come into it, in his mind.

This is important, because he isn’t selling this shit to babysitters. He’s selling it to the people that employ the babysitters. He is telling those people that what matters is NOT providing a quality product or service. What matters is making people feel good about you. You don’t need to give clients/customers *actual* value for their money. You just need to trick them into thinking you are.

The Bud Light controversy shouldn’t be about the fact that Bud Light hired a trans person. It should be about the fact that whatever company owns Bud Light is paying someone a million dollars to post shit on the internet while the guys who actually make the beer and get it on the shelves are being told they don’t “deserve” a living wage because their labor is “unskilled” and therefore without value.

Yet without them THERE IS NO FUCKING BEER TO SELL.

America has a priority problem. The shit we consider “good” and “worthy” employment is just a series of people blowing smoke up each other’s asses while exploiting the folks who actually make the products and provide the services.

And while they’re at it, these companies also refuse to spend money on ingredients or supplies or training or even just sufficient staffing, so the product/service they provide gets worse and worse and the consumers get madder and madder AT THE WRONG PEOPLE and the old guys at the top just laugh and get fatter.

Fuck you Mitchell deVillier, and all men like you.

Btw, when I told him I don’t like his stuff and he should never contact me again, he did anyway. To call me crazy.  Men who don’t like to hear what I have to say LOVE to call me crazy.

Yes, I am mentally ill. But not the way he thinks. And assholes like him are EXACTLY why I’m doing this.

I’M NOT CRAZY, I’M JUST A LITTLE UNWELL.1

But unlike assholes like Mitch, I know exactly what is “wrong” with me, and why it is “wrong” with me, and it’s guys like him.

What’s your problem, girl?2

You. You are my fucking problem. You and the millions of men just like you who think you are such hot shit because you managed to trick and exploit your way to financial security.

I don’t want to be that person. If I make money off of this, I want it to be because people love my voice and want to help me keep a roof over my family’s head while I get the words down on paper.

If enough people don’t find my writing good enough to warrant paying for it, then I will go do something else. But I’m not here to trick anyone, or to change anyone’s mind. I want friends, not customers.

And if you want that too, send me email and get designing. We all have a piece of art somewhere inside of us. Even just business card sized.

Becoming Alternative is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider subscribing to my substack at https://becomingalternative.substack.com/ or making a one time gift at https://venmo.com/u/rmfontenot

  1. It’s a Matchbox 20 song. Unwell. From the album More Than You Think You Are.
    ↩︎
  2. In addition to being a horribly common phrase, this is from one of Rob Thomas’ solo songs, fittingly called Problem Girl. Which is the source of the tattoo on my right bicep. ↩︎
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