MB 2021 – nobody cares!

Here's something from an era that MBBlokes might recognise:

Monday morning, it's time to get up
Two cups of coffee and 'e runs for the bus
Looks in the window and fixes da hair
....nobody notices, nobody cares!

There’s been precious little to write about the goings on over at MB recently, because, well, there’s precious little going on! The boys have been super successful at one thing – alienating their readership (or would-be readership) by consistently getting almost everything wrong and pushing some kind of strange barrow (full of complete contradictions) politically.

The results are plain to see – nobody notices, nobody cares. Like, for example, this fine day:

share market views – nobody notices:

labour market views – nobody notices:

property views – nobody notices:

property views – nobody notices:

grumpy china rants – nobody cares:

The most succesful post of the day is some TL/DR rant about whatsit thingy:

Probably need more or these ones, whatever they’re about!

So, what’s the problem? Why isn’t anyone reading or writing at MB? Seems to me that the boys have placed their bets wrong. They could’ve run MB either as:

• A. a mainstreamish type of site, repeating what everyone is saying , maybe adding a twist of lemon here or a baked polenta rissole there. And the blokes that like the rissoles would be their readership.

• B. a contrarian type of site, courageously making bold and unexpected predictions and covering themselves in glory when these predictions come true. And the blokes amazed by glorious (and profitable!) predictions would be their readership.

Blokes chose option B, but apparently judged that being contrarian means disagreeing with everyone and everything. Problem is, the pack is usually not too far wrong – and by disagreeing with the pack ALL THE TIME is a sure way to fail to make profitable predictions and achieve glory. You’ve got to play the percentages, you blokes! You’ve got to pick your battles.

I suppose that, for a while, option C was also open. If you want to run a contrarian-to-everything type setup, Option C is

• C. going the whole hog and having an anything-goes policy like Zerohedge.

But i suppose the blokes’ gentle sensitivities were too fragile for that approach, so discourse was heavily curated (censored) to within a narrow window consistent with the blokes’ own biases. And hardly anyone wants to put up with that shit.

The outcome is plain to see and unsurprising.

If you want to succeed in the EZFKA, you need to either give people (A) what they are used to (e.g. Foxtel), or (B) give them a chance to make big fat profits (e.g. realty), or (c) let them run wild and feel like heroes (e.g. Bali holidays)

If you go feral-contrarian and offer up something unconventional, that leads to financial losses all while making people feel boxed in and walled up, you’re going to find yourself with few takers. eh?