The Internet Makes Bullying Really Easy

Sort of like that "be careful what you upload" commercial during which a girl finds a less than chaste picture of herself on the school bulletin board and pulls it down repeatedly only to find it put back up again, this German anti-cyber mobbing commercial illustrates the ill effect of online bullying.

Alas, internet or no internet, kids will be kids and kids will be cruel. It's not right but it's just the way it is.

It's the New WTF Blanket!

You've heard of the Snuggie, right? No? Well you're missing out on one of the coolest new fashion ever to hit the ... television in the form of a stupid infomercial. But forget about the actual infomercial and watch this parody. Did we say PARODY? Yes, we said PARODY. Get it? Parody!

Anyway, now that we've clarified that minor detail, check out the What the Fuck Blanket.

Sky's the Limit if Your Face is THIS Famous

Joining the distinguished ranks of Dame Edna and Fergie, Hello Kitty is lending her likeness to MAC cosmetics.

"We are thrilled to partner with a brand that shares the vision of offering an innovative, authentic and transforming experience to our loyal fan base," said Janet Hsu, who said some similarly frothy thing when Sanrio announced its partnership with McDonald's earlier this month.

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Yep. Sippin' the Coraline Kool-Aid Pret-ty Heavily.

Visit the deliciously dollhousey Coraline website. Enter the house, then click on the picture frame if you want to stitch buttons onto your face. Plenty to choose from, and each set of buttons is coupled with curiously thought-out descriptions. (That's the appeal of Coraline's marketing strategy: in keeping with the handmade motif, everything feels tailored to you, even things that obviously aren't.)

Once done tweaking and zooming your button eyes, download and save; embeds are available for MySpace and Facebook.

We also came across this Coraline Nike Dunks Giveaway offer. Okay, that's some pretty deep product whoring, but oh! we want them, just to have them, just because everything Coraline reeks of tasty dark girlwitch magic.

Stone Tweaks Twitter Stance

Co-founder Biz Stone wrote a blog post that elaborates on a suggestion he made earlier about monetizing Twitter. The crucial stuff:

"Twitter will remain free to use by everyone--individuals, companies, celebrities, etc. What we're thinking about is adding value in places where we are already seeing traction, not imposing fees on existing services."

So businesses already using Twitter can chill: they won't be charged extra for what they're already doing. Stone seems to be saying -- and we write that tentatively, because he leaves a lot of room for interpretation -- that only add-ons will cost anything, unless he means Twitter plans to bring ad support to high-traffic areas. (Hot hash tags and Summize search results look prime for this.)

"[We] hope to begin iterating on revenue products this year," he added.

Sounds like Jeff Bezos et al. are starting to tap their watches.

'We Want People to Be Screaming from Houses Across the Country'

Guerrilla Comm and Silicon Alley Insider scooped us on this Onion spoof on Sony: its complex, overambitious product line, and utopic rape-your-eyeballs ad strategy.

Imagine all that in a news brief coloured by the profane angst-rage you suffer once you finally get that "motherfucking time vampire"* home. (Oh yeah, language NSFW.)

"Maybe the Onion was inspired by 'BD-Live,' the confusing and ill-advised plan to integrate Blu-ray disc watching with instant messaging," said Alley Insider. And the sad part is, that crazy POS was real.

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The Homestead is a House of Cards, Say Radiohead and Shelter

Two days ago we mentioned Radiohead was donating one of its songs to a homeless shelter. Last night we got the footage.

The song is Videotape from In Rainbows, but the ad itself is called "House of Cards" -- the name of another In Rainbows track. Only the melody is used, adding an urgent tempo to a panning shot of a city, where a number of homes and skyscrapers are composed of cards that slowly begin to plummet.

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If It Doesn't Seem Very Bright, That's Because It's Not.

Then again, LA Gear has never been the sharpest tool in the marketer shed.

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