The Heights of Despair

One of the funniest sites on the web is www.despair.com. Their humour is cynical, satiric and often mean-spirited. I love it. But, of course, it is not to everyone's taste. As Mr Spock said on Star Trek, "Humor - a difficult concept."

Despair.com has some very funny parodies of training videos (check out my favorite - "Disconfirmation"), motivational posters and various other lampoons of the usually inane things spawned by the industry dedicated to getting rich by supposedly helping businesses motivate staff. These are the businesses that have convinced managers to give them money on the premise that meaningless slogans with cute pictures of koalas and kittens will make underpaid staff work even harder.

And of course the managers who hang these things on the walls then tell their bosses how proactive they are being in motivating their staff, which will hopefully motivate the boss to give them a substantial raise even if they aren't doing much for the staff itself.

In my final year with the company, I concluded every presentation to my boss and board with one of Despair's posters. It was called Retirement, and the thought underneath the picture of a chewed-up stub of a pencil read, "Because you've given so much of yourself to the company that you don't have anything left we can use."

Funny enough to me, but it was interesting how unfunny it was to some others. And how some of those who thought it funny became a wee bit nervous that not everyone else was laughing. Even funnier when it turned out to be more or less accurate.

Anyhow, the reason I was thinking of Despair.com was because I saw one of their newer "demotivational" posters. It's called Blogging, and the thought underneath reads: "Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few."

I guess it's a case for me of if the shoe fits, and it certainly got me thinking about this blogging stuff I've been doing. I'd been thinking about it quite a bit yesterday because, having had almost nothing to say for a couple of days, I was wondering where the next blog would come from. But then, Despair sends me an e-mail newsletter and I'm off to the races.

I could write more of my thoughts about blogging, but the lead-up about Despair is enough for today's post. As they've learned on TV, the absence of big ideas is a problem easily solved by a two-part show. So tomorrow, a blog on blogging.