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I've been lurking on this site for a while now. Mainly out of sheer curiosity, and mainly because it's oddly amusing to read the various comments here. I used to be quite the fan of nonsociety and still stop by there on occassion, but lately, I have been so seriously, incredibly irked by these gals and their shameless materialism, their vapid and sad little lives, and their laughable excuse of a "business", which is really just three dim-witted famewhores desperately attempting to be relevant at the wrong time.
It started with CES when I really saw the cards fall with those three; while I used to find those gals quirky and entertaining, I just felt embarrassed for them and embarrassed to even formerly approve of them. I'm a highly educated professional woman who wanted to cheer these girls on, but it became plainly obvious after that trip(why where they there?!) that they're nothing but tacky freeloaders who want fame and fortune at any cost.
Then when they started deleting comments and egging on haters and doing the whole shady Google practice, I got even more annoyed with them. Don't they realize that successful businesses welcome anyone, haters alike?!
The icing on the cake was Julia Allison disgustingly fawning all over the VERY married CEO of youtube like an obnoxious teenager with a painfully obvious crush...it's one thing to make one respectful photo with the guy, but this hussy took 14(??!!!) photos with him, then splashed 5 or 6 pics of it on her site, all in various "fuck me" poses?! WTF???!!!
How would she feel if some fame-whoring little trollip ever publically acted like that if that was HER hubby and father of her children??
Good God, woman, have some fucking respect, not just for a married CEO but for yourself!
The saddest part of all is that these gals obviously have squandered away what could've been a wonderful opportunity for them. THey've pissed away a great web opportunity and otherwise good connections because of their sheer greed, obvious laziness and lack of any marketable business skills.
If your business is a website that depends on "lifecasting", why the fuck would you only post a few trivial items maybe once or twice a day? Why would you post the same trivial shit repeatedly?? Why are you sooooo busy behind the scenes for a business that requires you to be ON the scene constantly???
It's old, it's boring, and it's frivolous. Mix it up, for god's sake.
USE YOUR CONNECTIONS/PAGEVIEWS TO MAYBE DO SOMETHING GOOD FOR OTHERS, PERHAPS? LIKE WORK SOME CHARITY BENEFITS, MAYBE??
(oh wait, that's just what they expect us haters to do instead. yet unlike them, we actually have real jobs, real relationships, and far more meaningful lives to uphold. what's their excuse?)
Meghan annoys me strictly because she won't even own up to being a total heiress or admit to her privileged background. What's there to hide for this poor little rich girl? Maybe it's because no one could possibly relate to a gal who mysteriously owns a posh NYC loft, wears designer duds, has constant access to pricey gadgets and goes on endless international travels, yet claims to be as broke as the rest of us? And really nice try there with the attempt to appear all humble on her birthday by posing as a volunteer in a soup kitchen.
Notice that was the first and last time we ever saw or heard mention of any of those famewhores attempting volunteer work or to do anything for anyone besides themselves? I'm not even convinced rich girl didn't stop by for 10 minutes to pose for pics in a shower cap to pretend like she actually did volunteer at that soup kitchen. Why didn't she lifecast THAT then?
Mary annoys me because she actually thinks she's some sort of well-connected, intelligent fashionista. When really, she just had a lucky streak with some goofy-looking overpriced/faddish handbags. What a poseur. She's just some badly educated broad with a severe case of label-whoredom whose gene pool unfortunately rendered her a good 10 years older-looking than she should be. I guess excessive tanning and living on nothing but juice and booze does that to a gal!
As for Julia, the woman I once found oddly endearing, I just find odd and sad. She really is rather astonishingly full of herself, isn't she? Who cares about covering a historic Innaguration and all its festivities when you can just shoot pages of photos of yourself in a borrowed dress within various hallways doing kissy-poses instead?
It's actually pretty pitiful to watch how her star flickered so bright for a hopeful while there, and now that her looks and former contacts are fading, so is that once bright star. She's basically a has-been whose 15-minutes of internet fame are ticking away faster than ever. She really is like the Edie Sedgwick of the internet world---like Edie, she was so hip and hot for a glam year or so, but instead of giving in to drugs like Edie, Julia's given in to mismanagement, a ridiculous sense of self-entitlement, and cupcake binges.
NIce going there, dumbass. You had everything going for you, and your former fans were rooting for you! Amazing how a failed reality show deal suddenly left all three gals flailing about for relevence. As if a reality show ever gives any of its former stars continued relevence anyway once its season is done.
These three need to face the facts that this nonsociety thing is going down the shitter and get on with their lives.
Julia seriously needs to move back to CHicago and go be a newscaster there or something. Maybe report on local entertainment. Write an autobio about her more entertaining years.
Mary needs to give up her deluded dreams of being a Manhattan socialite and move down to the South where she can meet that hubby already without all the younger/hotter competition eating her up alive there.
Meghan can use her awkward good looks to secure another plum hedge fund position or work for some techie site and continue to thrive on her trust fund. Maybe she wouldn't worry about being single the rest of her life if she'd put those gadgets down already and reinvest her time in learing better personal skills.
I guess I'm just as frustrated as the rest of you now. Especially since those three dimwits don't even have the balls to allow any comments on THEIR site; if they had any business sense whatsoever, stupid Julia would continue her whole "any attention is good attention" motto and let the haters keep the site entertaining, because right now it's a total snoozefest!!!
But then again, her ego is every bit as bloated as the rest of her is gradually getting, so I would expect no less.
One more thing: I'm annoyed that three grown women, women almost 30, act like a bunch of goofy teenage girls. If that's their idea of "live differently", it's no wonder none of them seem to have successful relationships.
The world only needs one Paris Hilton, and it's obvious that all three of them secretly would give anything to be just like her, living a fluffy little bubble of a desirable life that's nothing more than endless parties, overpriced designerwear spending sprees, fashion shows, magazine stories, etc.
But their former fanbase is finally onto them and their severely gauche ways. And for three women who seem to offer nothing more than idiotic girlie stereotypes in pretty packages, their clock is ticking extra fast:
These gals are not 25 anymore. Time to start Plan B if they still plan to compete like they're the hot young hardbodies who use their good looks/feminine wiles to get where they want to in life.
Whew! Sorry if I rambled here. It felt so good to get that off my chest finally. Especially considering that they would never allow this post on THEIR site!!
If anyone wants to do me a serious favor, I double-dog dare any of you to e-mail my entire comment here to these three sad girls for the wake-up call they truly do deserve from a former fan; I would myself, but I figure I've wasted enough of my time here hating on them as it is. I have to go work with the mentally disabled tonight, after all!
(nice work on this site, folks. fight the power!)
Welcome to the terrible majesty of the bray and the cray!
Monday, January 26, 2009
What she said.
One of our commenters posted a little diatribe of her (his?) own, and we rather liked it. Here you go, in case you missed it:
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That sounds an awful lot like their super fan Sheryl. When you've lost Sheryl, you know you've lost everything. But nice work though - it encapsulates a lot of reasons why they've lost A LOT of fans/readers/page views.
ReplyDeleteBRAVO!!! Damn, that was good. (And practically every bit of it, but for the small bit of expired faint praise, EXACTLY what I think every time I read that site. I just don't express it so well.)
ReplyDeleteFight the power? What power? The power of boredom? Julia and her ilk are boring in and of themselves...it is only the trainwreck that is interesting.
ReplyDeleteThis is nowhere near as brilliant as the screed above but since we're speaking of all the problems with NS I thought I'd add yet another example.
ReplyDeleteAnyone notice how poor their coverage of the Sundance contest was?
Meghan made one or two last minute posts about it and even those lacked basic facts and context, such as what her purpose was in going and how she came to be involved, etc.
She wrote on her blog and twitter that she needed reader help for the competition and yet never explained what kind of help or what on earth she was talking about.
Two other contestants, Shira and Matt posted several times about the contest before it began and actually explained clearly to their readers in advance what the contest was and what they as contestants would be doing there.
Matt wrote a long post about not only what the event was but what its purpose was and more important his reason for being involved (something we never seem to know with any event attended by Nonsociety).
And unlike Meghan, Shira clearly explained how social networks and readers played into the whole thing and how they could help support their favorites in the competition.
Matt and Shira kept their readers informed on what was going on, and Matt even posted a disclosure on his blog about getting free airfare to Sundance as part of the whole deal. Guess who didn't post any such disclosure (assuming she got the same gift) or provide any such wealth of information on the event once again (much like the CES debacle).
Perhaps worst of all, after it ended and she didn't win, Meghan never even mentioned the 24 hours in Sundance event again. She never wrote a post summing up the experience nor even simply announced that it had ended (unless you count a post she wrote announcing that she was heading to SF from Sundance).
What stuck out most to me was that Meghan Asha didn't even once publicly mention on Nonsociety who won nor did she congratulate the winners (one of whom it would seem, according to JA's IM to Owen of Gawker, Meghan must have actually liked enough to introduce to Julia).
Not having even the decency to post even a quick shout out publicly to the winners (which Meghan apparently believed she'd be initially, according to her comments about the contest) or bothering to explain clearly or sum up the event for readers? Par for the course for NS it seems.
Based on their coverage of events, including the Sundance contest (and I won't even touch the all-JA-party-photos-no-mention-of-the-actual-inauguration-itself inauguration coverage fiasco), it's hard to come to any conclusion besides that they don't go to events even remotely for covering them for readers, they go for the sake of getting publicity and networking and getting freebies (IMO).
It seems to me that their content sucks largely because they don't seem to care about it one bit and because they seem to be self absorbed and delusional enough to actually believe that nonstop photos of themselves and insipid conversations they have should be fascinating enough to qualify as great content. Is it any wonder former readers begin to feel the way the brilliant commenter quoted in this post does?
Sorry for the long rant!
Thanks!! It felt nice to get that rant out. Please don't insult me though: um yeah, I'm so not Sheryl. Or that Allison kid. Those 2 or 3 crazed fans left posting there will probably be here on the darkside soon enough with the rest of us though.
ReplyDeleteIneff--
ReplyDeleteYes, you're right about Sundance and Meghan (Julia in DC, Mary on Earth, etc.). It can all be placed under their NS mantra: "If you don't mention it again, it will fade away."
Something like that...
Funny Bunny
ReplyDeleteAnother of their mottos: "If it's not about (or a photo of) me, it's not of value to mention for others to see."
Thus explaining the absence of any mentions of Obama becoming president at the inauguration (and really who cares about the President when there are pics of JA in a new setting to see?), lack of mention of another team winning the Sundance competition, lots of photos of them but no real mention of products (till much after the fact) at CES, etc.
Methinks they should write up all their mottos (the "shut your trap" one from Mary's latest masterpiece could be part of it too) and sell to other businesses.
--Ineffable
Funny Bunny- very astute observation. We should start a list of things that fall under the "if you don't mention it, it will fade away" umbrella.
ReplyDeleteJust off the top of my head, I've got:
- those fancy schmancy loft we saw TOURS of that let you to believe they'd be signing a lease asap
- the reality show. notice they never owned up to the fact that it wasn't picked up?
Just another irksome thing about Julia. Her life is soooo exciting and she is just soooo busy running this "business" that she never has time to be accountable for her actions and own up to failings? Ugh.
A little gossip about the reality show: That party they threw back in early summer was part of the pilot. Charles Forman was in it, and was asked to sign on to be a part of it. He wanted none of it.
ReplyDelete...That's all I've got!
Anon 8:14,
ReplyDeleteOh the list goes on and on...we would sound obsessed if we remembered them all! Nonetheless, you're right -- they need to be honest about all of it. They just end up sounding more and more scatterbrainy, which erodes at their credibility (for those who thought they had any) and eventual success (again, for those who thought there could be).
Some more NS mantras (Can this be an ongoing list in some specific thread, NSRB?! "YAY!"):
"If I am given a free product or service, I am not receiving payment."
"Covering, injecting and camouflaging blemishes on the outside can also benefit those on the inside."
"If I stand next to a successful person and this is captured on film, I am thereby successful too."
"I am a feminist because I know my power lies within my appearance and I choose to use it."
"A picture is worth a thousand words and fourteen pictures is fourteen thousand words."
XOXO
I can add to the all hype, no delivery list:
ReplyDelete1. The work space/loft for filming
2. The reality show
3. The endless photo shoots for magazines... what magazines?
4. Julia's ticket to the inauguration... that she did not actually go to.
5. Their other contributors to NS... NO other contributors
6. The NS community they wanted to create - a better community has sprung up here overnight while their website fails
7. The NS redesign - not there
8. Any "bounce" from Julia Allison's Wired cover - I thought being on the cover of a magazine was supposed to make your more famous, not less famous
9. Julia and Randi's epic birthday blow out - not happening
10. Julia having a successful relationship with Mark Z. or any successful tech entrepreneur
11. No one is willing to publicly associate with them - they have less than 60 people in their Facebook groups for NS and TMI
the list goes on...
Love the idea of an ongoing "motto" thread. You've got quite the knack for them, FunnyBunny.
ReplyDelete--Ineff.
Ineff --
ReplyDeleteWell, I love living differently and I am so crazy.
Great list anon
ReplyDeleteThe inauguration was a huge one. After all the hype about having a ticket, once she actually ended up not going she just bypassed all talk of the event from that point on. No admitting she didn't go and no mention of the actual ceremony at all.
As for the all hype no delivery list:
- the 1 mil hits that were to come by Jan 20 I believe it was.
-the dying the hair red.
-the "personal development" (or something to that effect) model she supposedly was so interested in and was going to focus her show and busienss on.
-the momentary spiritual awakening she had and the "conversation" she was supposedly starting about it on her blog (that lasted all of three or so posts on one night
-the interest in "turn the other" cheek just days before calling Owen Thomas a c*nt just for referring to her as an "egoblogger"
I'm sure there are oh so many more where those came from
--Ineff.
NS Mantras cont'd:
ReplyDelete"If you are cornered in critique, play the victim."
"Receiving sympathy is equal to garnering respect."
"The perceptions of others only matter when they are positive."
How about the advice box.
ReplyDeleteFormer fan here. I have sent two serious, not joke-y questions to them. Never answered, and the feature has not been updated for weeks. I finally got fed up and asked two days in a row why they don't answer the questions or update the feature. Both times my comment was deleted very quickly.
What the hell is that?
Those girls don't care, aren't serious about maintaining the site, and I'm sad to admit, are just as lazy and dishonest as all the haters said they were.
I am really pissed off.
Jenna,
ReplyDeleteWell, welcome to a place to both vent your frustrations and talk about the umbrella issues that envelope them!
I assure you, you won't be deleted here! We can sure take criticism -- we're called "haters" all the time. What a compliment to them that their "haters" are intelligent, well-spoken (in type) and insightful people!
"Julia Allison: The Girl Who Cried Harvard"
ReplyDelete"Mary Rambin: "Get a CluePrint (on) Trends"
"Meghan Asha: "Not-so-SlumDog Millionaire"
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that bothers me the most about Julia is that she whines about how busy she is running the business, which makes it hard to lifecast but um, isn't lifecasting the fundamental part of the business?? Lady, wake up! If your "business" is a blog/journal/"lifecast," then job one is PRODUCING CONTENT. THAT is "running the business," not jetting off to Munich so that you can lifecast about the success of your lifecasting (and the fucking meta-ness of it all gives me a headache).
ReplyDeleteEdited to fix punctuation!
I learned of Julia on Gawker and she was mindless entertainment to me for some time, but her black heart, narcissism and idiocy soon drove me to loathing. I lived in NYC for 11 years and I heart NYC. So, anyone who puts up a post asking for restaurant tips, good theater shows to see or hot new NYC things to do/see is not actually LIVING there.
ReplyDeleteGet off the blogs and go LIVE in NYC, bitch!
Also, she works for a magazine that tells her all of the above. Weekly, bitch.
What an asshole.
Then, I learned about Meghan Asha.
What a poseur.
Hedge fund manager? Girl geek? Teenage fashion model? Snowboarder? Fox TV Red Eye commentator? Marathoner? Guitar player?
All? FAIL?
She does something once and she claims it's her passion.
She is a fully funded trustaffarian with limited social skills.
She went to Spain and found all the food too "weird" and wound up at Burger King where she blogged pics of herself wearing the stupid paper crown.
Girl is an idiot.
Just my rant. Baugher does it beautifully:
http://baugher.tumblr.com/
My addition:
ReplyDeletePromising to "Live Differently" and using it as their tagline, while partaking in behaviors that ingrain every stereotype that is associated with the ugliest aspects of American culture: Obsession with looks, ruthlessness to get ahead, overeating, undereating, fixation on celebrity culture, political apathy. And on. And on. And on.
Why isn't tagline "Livin' the Stereotype."???
I originally started a blog on Tumblr ranting about Mary Rambin. But I too found that Meghan Asha is a complete ass hat who is a seriously stupid.
ReplyDeleteYes, they are all trust funded, but I actually believe the worst of the three has become Asha as she purports to be sweet and normal, but in reality she's the one that is a step away from the short yellow bus.
Just my two cents
Regina IMO, for them, the content is not the business at all. I think it's the publicity, sponsorships, trips, freebies, and ability to socialize, travel, and indulge in their favorite pastime (talking about and promoting themselves and stroking their own massive egos) for a living that are the focus and reason for the business's existence.
ReplyDeleteTo me it seems the content just gives them an excuse and vehicle for going after those things above that they really seem to be in all this for by allowing them to have some product, a selling point (page views etc) and a reason to explain the existence of their ego-venture.
Meeting an outside need or pleasing an audience seem to not enter into the picture at all. Is it any wonder then that readers are turned off, when NS makes it clear again and again that the reader experience is not a concern of theirs and that they are too busy living off reader page views and obsessing about themselves to bother meeting the needs of or even listening to their readers?
And Jenna I also wrote a genuine, respectful advice box question that was never heard of again. So many of my comments (all respectful) were deleted I finally just stopped bothering.
Mona love your "living the sterotype" tagline. So perfect for them.
--Ineff.
January 26, 2009 11:23 PM
"we're feminists because he doesn't send the towncar EVERY time"
ReplyDelete"obsessing about how much we shit is not an eating disorder. nope. not at all."
When fans write letters like this, that's when you know you have a REAL problems on your hands, not one you blame on those who are just "jealous" or "have no lives."
ReplyDeleteBut honestly guys, I must admit I'm finding it boring to complain about them anymore because of the clarity of the stupidity involved. Is anyone else feeling this?
It's all so clear: They are vapid, have no marketing sense and don't give a damn about their "product" or their "business."
If anything, NonSociety has succeeded because it has shown us that women like this do in fact exist and that they're not only character archetypes manufactured by the movies.
There are many more women where NonSociety came from.
Ineff-- It can actually be said more succinctly: Live Stereotypically.
ReplyDeleteWhere are those Nomsociety boys to do another spoof when you need 'em?
About the Chad Hurley photographs, I can imagine Julia denying vigorously that she has any improper intent towards him, and to be honest, she probably doesn't. BUT, the point that the dumb bunny is missing is that when you dress in tight shirts that show off your push-up bra boobs and deliberately pose in a sexual way (i.e. hip thrust out, pursed lips, eyelids lowered) you are redirecting the focus of the photograph, and it doesn't matter how intelligent you are or how innocent your intentions may be. Girl, drop that pose and start dressing like a real businesswoman like your friend Randi. People might take you more seriously.
ReplyDelete"call people the most vulgar names ever (ie:the people at gawker)and then pretend you are a classy lady worthy of working for the prez"
ReplyDeleteI don't have much time, but I can fill you in later if you are interested. There was an interest in Julia's reality show. Bravo had coined it "I.T. Girls", and there was some initial excitement. However, the ultimate reason it failed was due to the "extreme unlikability of the participants, especially Ms. Allison". There were also many other reasons, but Bravo needed characters that people could relate to. It is one thing to love to hate someone, it is another thing to truly just hate that person. They felt there were no likeable characters whatsoever, including Ms. Megan Asha Parikh. Asha is Megan's middle name, she copied Julia Allison Baugher's idea of using the middle name as a last name, to prevent embarrassing the family name. Also, FYI, Bravo never put up a dime, nor did they reimburse for anything. All expenses were covered by whatever seed money they received for their "start-up".
ReplyDeleteAlso, Mary is a veteran of reality shows, as she participated in some cheese-fest back in 2006. I forgot the name, something like "Ocean Drive", and it only ran for one episode, although I believe they taped 6 episodes. That is where she met her ex-roommate, Lauren Heft.
Got to go!
Nicole: Please email us at nonsociety.rb@gmail.com!
ReplyDelete@nicole: i figured as much re: the TV show. Even if bravo did buy the pilot and shot it, you still have to go through focus groups and audience/exec approvals. These chicks are not likeable when it comes down to it, so I figured it wouldn't work. they're not even likeable in the Real Housewives dimwit kind of way either. Just mediocre.
ReplyDeleteThey would have been more boring than that Ali Hilfiger MTV reality show...remember?!! ahahhaa
ReplyDeleteTheir "show" would have focused on the events they go to because that's what people want to see. When the events are over, it's just this sad clown in her apartment taking pictures of herself before the make-up comes off. It would have SUCKED.
"Regina IMO, for them, the content is not the business at all. I think it's the publicity, sponsorships, trips, freebies, and ability to socialize, travel, and indulge in their favorite pastime (talking about and promoting themselves and stroking their own massive egos) for a living that are the focus and reason for the business's existence."
ReplyDeleteIneffable, I would agree with all of that. I do think the "business" is really just a threadbare excuse to get free stuff, be photographed and written about, and to generally rub their fabulousness in other people's faces. But *ostensibly* the business is lifecasting, so the whole "I'm too busy working on my lifecasting business to lifecast" nonsense that Julia is shoveling does not even approach a worthy explanation. Does she not even have the business savvy to realize that she will NEVER secure sponsors without content?
As for all the stuff with Chad Hurley, I'd agree with "Anonymous" that JA most likely wasn't chasing after him. But if that's the case, and she doesn't want people to assume that anything untoward was going on, why did she freak-out on Twitter about losing the camera, specifically worried about someone getting their hands on the pics of the two of them? It just SOUNDS shady, even if it isn't. JA needs a publicist or manager or someone to tell her, "No." She has far, far too many people blowing smoke up her ass.
has anyone here read sheryl spencer's blog? it's v. upsetting. it's like she's trying to emulate the JA lifecasting thing actively, only in nashville.
ReplyDeletei shudder to think that these three horror shows are inspiring anyone to do anything.
if ja were on tv more, it would just highlight her tranny makeup
ReplyDeleteRe: Regina (x2)
ReplyDelete100% agree.
Regina I agree with you. But yeah I don't think they are approaching this from a business angle in the sense that they would do what makes sense business wise in terms of content and presentation. The content part seems fully ego driven and therefore I don't think they'd take advice from anyone on it or tailor it in any way to meet the needs of an audience.
ReplyDeleteI think at first they did put more into the content, more effort at least, till it came time to try to monetize and now that is their focus and they actually think it reasonable to expect viewers and readers to "understand" that and not expect them to put time into their content. In that way they have driven at least some readers away I'm guessing. I know I do all I can to avoid giving my page views to them as I consider their approach an insult to the audience.
Plus I do think they, especially JA, believe they truly are so interesting that constant pics of themselves and their dull conversations are fascinating to others and nothing more is needed.
--Ineffable