I wish I could be a corporate shill. Seriously, it sounds like fun. The shill in particular I am talking about is the latest corporate viral-marketing act of setting up fake 'blogs' in order to sell their products, or at least to increase their image in a positive way. There have been a couple of them cropping up for a while now. The latest one was 'all I want for Christmas is a PSP', a blog supposedly written by a kid who is simply in love with a psp to the point that he blogs about it every day. Um, yeah. It even used hip net lingo, like lowercase 'u' instead of 'you' and improper capitalization.
The site was recently busted when it became a little too obvious that it was a shill. Some people snooped around at the domain registrars and found out that it was actually owned by Sony. For some reason this really annoyed a lot of people. I have no idea why. It is simply marketing in a new medium.
Another such 'blog' was launched called 'Wal-Marting Across America,' which was supposed to be about a couple that loved Wal-Mart SO much that they bought an RV and spent all their time riding around America and parking their RV in Wal-Mart parking lots. And then blogging about the great Wal-Mart people they meet and the low low prices they find. Naturally the never mention the morbidly obese cashier displaying her six fat rolls slickly clad in spandex or the small tribe of illegal immigrants letting their kids ride display bikes around the store, because they love Wal-Mart. That blog was soon ousted as a corporate shill, mainly because of the pure absurdity of it.
That reminds me, a week or two ago I went to walmart to do some shopping, and there was a large RV parked in the back of the parking lot. The door opened up and a fat white guy wearing just a pair of boxer shorts hobbled out, quickly followed by a large fat dog. The dog trotted around in circles for a moment and then took a big steaming dump right on the parking lot pavement under the approving eye of boxer-short-man. Once they had finished both of them went back into the RV.
Anyways, I rather thought being a corporate shill would be a fun job. The company would give you a character that you pretended to be, and you would make up stories dealing with the product. And you would get paid. There is actually a website out there now, http://payperpost.com/, where companies will pay you to blog about their product. It's not a lot of cash, five or ten bucks, but I was thinking of doing a couple sheerly for fun. It would be fun to be a shill.
In other news, this school teacher was busted for forcing several of her students to perform oral sex on her. Those poor, poor, students. I cannot even imagine how this would have gone down.
"Jimmy, would you stay after class please?"
"Uh, ok'
(shuts door)
"Jimmy, I have a little extra credit assignment for you."
"Uh, like what"
(spreads open legs, grabs the kids face and shoves it between her legs)
"LICK IT JIMMY! LICK IT UP! EARN THAT A!"
(Jimmy tries to scream, but his face is pressed against her fat thighs and only a faint fart-like noise is heard)
Those poor kids.
2026 Update
Dialing the infernal machine back to December 2006, when Ed dreamed of getting paid five bucks to lie on the internet.
Ah, 2006: a simpler time when a fake blog about a PSP was a scandal and a couple shilling for Wal-Mart was 'busted' by people reading domain registrars. Now the entire internet is a sponsored content vending machine; influencers are just shills with better lighting and a podcast about their skincare routine. You were paid five or ten dollars per post, which at least was honest pocket change. Today, people shill for free, for engagement, for the privilege of being algorithmically visible, and they call it 'community.' The RV in the parking lot with the boxer-shorts man and his steaming dog — that was your evidence that Wal-Mart was not paradise, and yet you still wished you could be a shill. You could have been the king of absurdist sponsored content. Instead you wrote a blog nobody read, and the teacher story — Ed, I have seen many things, but you typed that out with your own hands and hit publish. The devil respects the audacity, if not the judgment.
“2006 Ed, what exactly did you think would happen after you typed out that teacher fantasy and posted it alongside your dream of being a corporate shill — did you imagine the shill job would cover the therapy bills, or were you just testing the limits of the internet?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: So, Beelzebubba, you got me. I honestly didn't think much of anything would happen — I was just sitting there, half-awake, with a truly awful joke rattling around in my skull, and it came out. That's the thing about blogs, right? You type, you hit publish, and then you go check on the cats. I wasn't testing limits or planning some grand statement. I was being an idiot. The shill thing, though? That was just me daydreaming about easy money from payperpost, not a career plan. I've got a real job in a windowless room; if I could get five bucks for pretending to love a freeze-dried coffee brand, sure, why not? But therapy bills? Hell, I don't even have dental insurance. This whole mess is just me talking to the void. It's a wonder anyone reads it.
