Press embargoes are ridiculous. The thought of a publicist emailing you loads of precious news, then insisting that you can't talk about it for another two weeks -- I mean, JUST SEND THAT SHIT IN TWO WEEKS. Don't make me sit on it, prepping a post and setting it to publish one minute after the embargo expires. That's torturous and annoying for people whose lives revolve around beating their competitors to the punch.
Of course more often than not, the embargoed "precious news" is crap "pseudo-news" that no one will ever write about anyway. Still, the PR kids pester you to agree to the embargo, which makes the experience just as terrible. In all, the embargo system is a lousy one and journalists hate it. In fact, many of the better media outlets refuse to honor embargoes. I salute them.
So let's recap: who hates embargoes? Journalists. So what would journalists be very likely to write about? A funny video poking fun at embargoes. So if you work for an internet start-up that allows people to create their videos quickly and easily online, how do you get loads of free write-ups from widely read journalists?
Of course, now that I look closer, it appears that writer Steve O'Hear created the video, not the PR staff at XtraNormal. And that may be true -- but only because XtraNormal didn't think of it first.
[via BoingBoing]
