Aptorius, on 28 December 2011 - 12:28 PM, said:
http://penny-arcade....2/26/an-update1
Quote
An update
I just wanted to post an update with some of the stuff that has happened over on my end with regards to all this Ocean Marketing stuff.
Around midnight last night Paul sent me a mail saying that I could expect to hear from their attorneys. As of right now that still has not happened and honestly I don’t expect it will. Our attorneys (who are real people with an office and everything) are ready should it get to that point though.
At 7:12am this morning I got another mail from Paul. It was one line and simply said:
“You have the power Mike Please make it stop”
The reality is that once I had posted the emails I didn’t have the power anymore. The Internet had it now and nothing I said or did was going to change that.
An hour later I got a more complete apology:
Hey Mike,
I just wanted to apologize for the way our emails progressed I didn’t know how big your site was and I really didn’t believe you ran Pax , So for what’s its worth I am very sorry. Your post has obviously made my life very difficult and I have not slept yet dealing with all the spam and personal information intrusion as well as my family being smeared on the internet.
If you can please accept my apology and anything you can do to help if not me my son and wife please do. I have apologized to Dave and apologized to you what else can I do please tell me so I can make things good. I obviously care or I would not be emailing you.
I think there is a big difference between being sorry and being sorry you got caught. I have a real problem with bullies. I spent my childhood moving from school to school and I got made fun of everyplace I landed. I feel like Paul is a bully and maybe that’s why I have no sympathy here. Someday every bully meets and even bigger bully and maybe that’s me in this case. It’s the same thing that happened with Jack Thompson. It might not always make the most business sense and it is a policy that has caused us some legal problems, but I really don’t give a shit about that. When these assholes threaten me or Penny Arcade I just laugh. I will personally burn everything I’ve made to the fucking ground if I think I can catch them in the flames.
-Gabe out
Yeah. Like Gabe says this is now out of his hands.
And this honestly comes off as a most insincere apology. As though not knowing he was fucking with someone influential makes his behaviour excusable. He just throws his wife and children in there as an after thought.
EDIT: And here is Pauls apology to Dave:
Quote
Hey Dave,
I just wanted to apologize for the way our emails progressed from beginning to end , You caught me on an extremely bad day and I had been dealing with 100’s and hundreds of emails trying to explain the situation to everyone on where the product was and you just pushed me a little too much and I should have just apologized and tried to explain things better. Also I had a really bad day losing a friend to an overdose and the stress of my newborn baby and the Holiday ,missing my family and just stressing on getting product out to everyone and why it was held up in customs wore me out.
I am deeply sorry for any disrespect , aggravation or lack of information on the delivery date. We knew when product was leaving china and we were trying to adhere to a strict deadline but due to port issues and air freight issues. The units are domestic now and awaiting pick up at customs . So we missed the 17th deadline and I apologize for that but it was out of my control and besides me no one else was helping me handle the situation so imagine the weight on my shoulders.
I’m not asking for any sympathy just for some understanding and forgiveness , I’m human just like everyone else and made a mistake. I underestimated you and its cost me a lot of trouble thousands of spam emails , a lot of personal bashing , and internet spam and trouble and just overall stress with my wife and newborn. I ask that you please accept my apology as a peace offering I will refund your money and give you your 2 units/Avengers free of charge please help me to get some of this negativity removed or at least my personal name although its already all over the internet and the calls and emails will not stop but any help will be appreciated especially with penny arcade as Mike and edit his own website I owe him an apology too which I will write next.
The thing that really bothers me is that this guy is in charge of marketing and PR, he must have some kind of college degree I guess, and yet he doesn't seem to understand the basic principles of communication. It's like he's completely unable to process that he is the one that is at fault and somehow expects that him apologising means that now the other guy needs to help him. Further more the way he choses his words and phrases his sentences lack any kind of professional skill.
If you are making an apology don't make excuses. Just apologise. And don't ask for something in return.
There's something really disturbing about this guy. I don't know if he's a borderline sociopath or just a narcissist but he doesn't seem to understand basic human interactions very well.
I don't have a degree in this, or anything, but I've had a fair bit of experience (round 2 years now) working in, and training people in fundraising/sales, which shares a number of commonalities with marketing.
I can understand why he's making excuses--if he's stuck in PR-speak mode, you want to give people reasons--after all, you need to handle objections.
The thing is, as Apt pointed out, he's doing it poorly. I won't go into the whole issue of how un-professional he's been throughout the whole thing, but his handling of the situation is fairly poor.
Although i'm hard-pressed to think of what he could say at this point, I recognise the basic approach of "provide more information to show a different angle on the issue" approach.
in order to make it effective, he'd have to make himself look a lot worse though. He hasn't stressed nearly enough how much of an ass he's been. to get ppl to feel emphatic, he needs to stress that tons more.
The problem with the gene pool is that there's no lifeguard
THE CONTESTtm WINNER--чемпіон самоконтролю
Jump Around, on 23 October 2011 - 11:04 AM, said:
And I want to state that Ment has out-weaseled me by far in this game.
Aptorian 
Help
