Current mood:	mmm...bento
Entry tags:	food

All over plastic lunch boxes
Every time I think I've seen it all, I see something new and stranger.

Over on bentolunch ss_biggie makes a post about how one of their members, thejenn1, has been selling bento lunch boxes from her website bentoyum. The fact that she is both a small business owner and writing articles about her viral marketing makes her...something. I don't know what. This sends the community into an uproar of scandal as people are not happy that she didn't tell them she was in business to make money.

thejenn1 posts in her defense and it snowballs from there. Sockpuppeting accusations, social experiments, just JELUS, and general outrage over if her being a business even makes a difference.

Sit back, pull up some sushi. Kinda small, but tasty, lulz.

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ayezur
2007-06-23 12:32 am UTC (link)

...It's one thing when it comes up in the course of natural conversation: Soccer Parent A says, "Gee, I've got all these little electrical fixes to do around the house, I don't know when I'll ever get to them, and Soccer Parent B says, "Maybe I can help you - I moonlight as a home handyman - here's my card."
But that's different from having Soccer Parent B deliberately steering conversations around to home repairs so that she can hand out the cards, and then writing an article for the local paper about how to exploit kids' sports activities as a sales opportunity for a home business.

....because the comm isn't for talking about bento?

I'm confused. She's giving bento advice, right? Her bento lunches look tasty. And oh look, there is bento right there for buying should I be inspired to start making my own bento. Mmmm, bento.

So very, very confused.

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issendai
2007-06-23 01:47 pm UTC (link)

It's because people now feel like they were having conversations with her, and she was having sales pitches with them. It's like going to a bar, chatting with a guy, thinking you're hitting it off great, and then finding out that he's there to steer people to a "VIP lounge" that packs an extra charge. Yeah, he still flirted with you, and maybe he even meant the nice things he said to you, but it still wasn't real.

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