T-Shirt Hell pulls a fast one; closing message a troll for more business

http://www.tshirthell.com/hello.php

by JimEngland • 17 years ago

27 31 17 years ago

Shock of all shocks. NO ONE saw this coming. eye roll

baddox2• 17 years ago

Yeah no joke. Every comment on every submission of the original story to every social news site on the internet expressed suspicion that this was marketing.

petercooper5• 17 years ago

And yet they kept discussing it and were interested in the (non)story. Proves human nature.

pg• 17 years ago

The surprising thing was that TechCrunch wrote about it.

nihilocrat• 17 years ago

I see the McRib is back.

daniel-cussen• 17 years ago

I believed it. A guy who changes his name to Sunshine Megatron might do anything.

chaostheory• 17 years ago

I guess they learned something from furniture stores

agotterer2• 17 years ago

100K shirts sold in 3 weeks. Brilliant. Props to the marketing concept.

condor2• 17 years ago

yes props for making each and every one of those customers feel like suckers, brilliant marketing move that's sure to pay off handsomely over the long term . . . although something tells me t-shirt hell's customers don't have a problem with being made to feel like suckers.

petercooper5• 17 years ago

A lot of Microsoft's customers feel like suckers but most keep paying for upgrades and buying more. It works.

agotterer2• 17 years ago

I didn't say I respected them. The whole company is about treating everything as a joke. They aren't selling expensive software licenses here. They aren't fishing for respect. They want the "wow" factor. And they are good at getting it.

pxlpshr2• 17 years ago

Obnoxious isn't a marketing concept.

petercooper5• 17 years ago

It can be - it's just rarely a good one. Rich Jerk is a great example of this - a heavily cross-promoted product that's done very well.

unalone• 17 years ago

It is if you're T-Shirt Hell and you sell shirts based on the concept of causing offense. Their whole thing is to piss people off, and they did it again.

sethg• 17 years ago

That's not marketing, that's fraud.

In a number of states, it's illegal to have a "going out of business sale" unless you are actually going out of business.

dcurtis• 17 years ago

How awesome would it be if someone sued them for this? It's worth snooping around to see if what he did was illegal.

ivank• 17 years ago

Already flagged and deleted yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=484639

petercooper5• 17 years ago

The discussion and votes given seem to indicate people are interested in the story nonetheless. censorship--

Harkins• 17 years ago

Quality control != censorship

Erf2• 17 years ago

Would've appreciated an NSFW on this.

jrockway• 17 years ago

What exactly is NSFW? (Of course, reading HN is not exactly work-related anyway, right?)

palish• 17 years ago

More like NSFUB (Not Safe For Uptight Bosses).

Erf2• 17 years ago

That is, of course, subjective, but I'm pretty sure a site that uses the n-bomb and the c-bomb (and an arsenal of others) qualifies.

brentr• 17 years ago

Perhaps they should now create a new shirt that says, "I got suckered by tshirthell.com". That's sure to create more buzz for them.

keltecp11• 17 years ago

i bought 3 shirts... you got me.

T-Shirt Hell pulls a fast one; closing message a troll for more business

Related Stories