Comments on: Seth Says: Discuss Amongst Yourselves

By: Jonathan Kranz

Jonathan Kranz — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 12:28:17 +0000

Why doesn’t Seth allow people to comment on his posts? Because he doesn’t have to. Period.
Whatever you think about the merits or follies of his work and wisdom, you can’t help but acknowledge his success. In his position, he doesn’t need to play nice-nice with the self-appointed pundits of the blogosphere.
Marketing is about selling stuff. If you’re really obsessed with “open exchanges” and “two-way conversations,” form a circle in the woods and sing around the campfire. The rest of us have work to do.

By: J.D. Matthews

J.D. Matthews — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 23:15:01 +0000

And now it’s time for the backwash of Seth Sycophants who bravely rush to the defense of their Messiah in hopes of attaining his grace and nirvana in the form of a link to them from him.
Seriously, Seth is an idiot and in no way a marketing God. I wouldn’t hire him to market the most sellable item in the world, because obviously he’s got nothing if he can’t even live by his own credo.
And if you can’t write because you’re worried about what commenters might say, then I submit that you’re just a piss poor writer.
I’m glad that all this conversation came up, because now I can avoid this windbag like the plague.

By: Ariel

Ariel — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 19:36:36 +0000

I’m actually surprised that so many people were surprised by these posts from Seth. He hasn’t allowed comments on his blog for some time and, despite allowing comments for the one post, it seemed unlikey to me that he would turn on comments for all his posts. I’m also disappointed that so many seem to have taken this as a slight and are now angry.
The ‘rules’ that he posted were, themselves, inconsistent. I think that nicely highlighted the diversity out there in the blogosphere and indicated to us that his real message is that there is no “one, true way.”
Occasional change keeps us engaged. We need to be able to rely on things (like our sources for marketing inspiration), but an appropriately placed surprise renews interest and keeps us from getting too complacent.
I appreciate Seth’s posts for provoking thought and, if I care enough about the subject or think it’s valuable to others, I’ll go talk about it on my own blog. This has the advantage of forcing the conversation to spread to other people for topics that inspire us. Topics that we don’t care as much about won’t get picked up. Would those same ideas spread as far if we could always comment directly on his blog? Or would we see more of an echo chamber effect?