Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 3526 to 3530 (17th to 21st July 2017)
Tova:
Well.
Rule number one for haggling is that you must be prepared to walk away from the deal if it's not right. Or at least to be able to bluff the person you're haggling with that you are.
The corollary to this rule is that it is too late to try and haggle after the service has already been performed. If he wanted to haggle, he should have done it back at Faye's place.
Obviously Faye's price was quite reasonable, or he simply would have turned her down.
I will just reiterate: representing paid advertising as an honest review is plain wrong. If you read review sites such as (to pick the first example that comes to my head) DC Rainmaker, who posts comprehensive reviews of GPS devices, he goes to great pains to assure readers that the device used for the review is returned and that he does not gain materially for reviewing the product. There's a reason for doing that. No-one would be happy if there was the slightest impression that perhaps a positive review was written, not because the product was good, but because the reviewer received compensation.
As an aside, I remember being with a friend who decided to haggle in a second hand bookstore. The price was already ridiculously cheap. He got a bit of a dirty look from both proprietor and from me.
BenRG:
I'm in sort of two minds about Clinton and Faye's behaviour in this strip. Whilst I am a bit disappointed at Faye being so silly as to threaten a customer into giving a positive review, on the other hand, Clinton really had it coming for trying to sell her a positive review. IRL, the world of on-line business reviews has quite a significant dark side to it and this strip sums up this problem in many ways.
FWIW, though, it tells you a lot that Faye considers a 'good review' to be: "They do great work, but don't sass them as they get scary!" Come to think of it, that was her philosophy at Coffee of Doom too, so she's still very much the same person in any way that matters!
--- Quote from: Oenone on 17 Jul 2017, 22:01 ---It's a rude move to negotiate about payment for parts and labor after the labor's already been done.
--- End quote ---
Precisely. Now, if Clinton said something like "I'll do 100 positive posts if you agree to let me have 5% of the take from every customer who tells you: 'Clinton sent me'," then Faye agreed then this would be a negotiation for advertising (if an ethically dubious one).
MrNumbers:
Authorial Intent Review here: Because the fourth wall is a lie and if I can't have immersion you shouldn't either.
Clinton is acting dodgy here partly because it's in character, yeah, but I feel like mostly to justify other people being a jerk to him and solidifying his role as 'butt monkey'. Scenes like this keep coming up so you don't feel as bad or taken out of the comic when a barista shakes him down for a hundred. It implies we're still not going to see him advance much as a character because Jeff finds him too useful filling his role, a superficial role which I'm increasingly growing frustrated with.
Also noting; I've been thinking Dora's increasing irrelevance to the comic salvaged by making her an investor, which gives more plausible reasons to bring her back from time to time with narrative significance. I was only thinking of it at the time as a way of creating tension between Faye and Bubbles, but it effectively brought Dora back in an unobtrusive way. This is a pretty slick trick that I'm super happy with.
flondrix:
--- Quote from: brasca on 17 Jul 2017, 22:26 ---He got shaken down by a waitress who provided simple advice. He needs to assert himself more.
--- End quote ---
I think that was what inspired him to try to "assert himself more" with Faye. :-/
Tova:
If we're going to break the fourth wall to explain Clinton's behaviour here, then see my sig.
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