Oogieloves experience Oogiehate and Oogieindifference

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I’m sure you’re disappointed to hear that the Oogieloves film has tanked terribly.  This may be record tankitude.

I of course don’t follow children’s television much, unless it’s about Hasbro’s marketing departiment going “WTF” over brightly colored pony fandom.  However I had seen the posters for this film when I went to watch a Rifftrax and figured it was some other franchise I’d ignored.

Turns out as I dug deeper it was an independent kid’s film, best summarized by a commenter at gawker as trying to look like a franchse.  I thought it was a franchise and am kind of surprised to discover it’s bounced around for 3 years before coming to theaters to fail.

So I’m getting the impression this little failure is an example of trying to create “insta-franchise” that didn’t work.  Can I understand why it was tried?  Sure – if people think it’s a franchise they may feel it’s reliable or predictable – franchises don’t even have to be “good” per se to succeed.  The thing is that a franchise builds on a series of past experiences, of which people had none to go on.

I also think a lesson can be taken in the internet age, the one of instant fame and viral effects.  Yes those things can build a franchise, yes you can create something fast, yes you can get attention.  But you can’t pretend you have something you don’t have.

The Oogieloves could learn a lot from the Kardashians and Honey Boo-Boo.  This, by the way, is probably something I’ll never type again.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Ask A Progeek: Cover Letters And Formality

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Ah, cover letters.  So important, so often forgotten.  So let’s see what one of our pro geeks out there wants to know about them:

How casual are you allowed to be in your cover letters?  I want to sound like a person, not a term paper, but I don’t want to seem like I don’t care about formality.

Cover letters are the first thing most people see in my experience – resumes are second – so it’s natural to worry about them.  A cover letter is often the “first impression.”  So the real question is what kind of first impression do you want to make.

There’s where you start.

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The Kinds Of Greedy People

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Greed is a disease.  It cannot be sated, it consumes and consumes until there is nothing left.  Greed knows no boundaries.  Because of this the wise and sane recognize its dangers and proscribe limits on ambitions.

There are those who have given themselves over to greed, who can never have enough, whose cravings know no end.  There are two types of these greedy people.

The foolish and greedy, enslaved to their drives, grasp and seek more, often without plan or prudence or forethought.  They defeat themselves more often than not.

The clever and greedy are shrewd.  They wish much, but they know that their efforts can easily be defeated, and that their greed is an obvious flaw.  Even if they do not acknowledge such things in their minds, they do so in their hearts.

The clever and greedy find naturally allies in the foolish and greedy.  The foolish and greedy can easily be led to support the clever and greedy in their campaigns, in their graspings, in their crusades.  The foolish and greedy, led by their desires constantly, are thus easily manipulated by those whose greed is paired with shrewdness, even though the foolish and greedy are but tools to the ambitions of those smarter than they.

It takes little to entice those with greed but little sense.  They are easily led by being told they are like those who are greedy but clever, that they too will be as well off as they, that they will also acquire much.  They forget that the greedy have no allies or loves, merely tools.

The clever and greedy may even say their sickness is a virtue, and the foolish and greedy will agree with them.

Thus the clever and greedy require the foolish and greedy to feed the fire of their desires, and the foolish and greedy never realize they are but fuel until all is ash.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.