Negative Peepback - The Backlash From Peep Bashers
I really didn't think that anyone would actually find it worth their time to diss on a Peep widget, but alas there are always some naysayers out there who enjoy belittling someone. One must take into acount that this thing is not serious, nor was it made with any serious intentions. It was made to prove the point that more people would download it than any of our other widgets, even though it didn't do anything.
Perhaps some people lack a sense of humor, perhaps some people enjoy being cruel, perhaps some people don't actually know what a Peep is and it's role as being a part of American humor because, like this widget, it is entirely silly and pointless. And made of marshmallow and colored sugar.
The first bit of non-constructive criticism came from "fatherfork" he writes:
"looks like poop"
Hmm...thanks for that observation. If your poop looks like that, well, you should see someone.
Next we have "TalkingMooseFan" on MacUpdate, and this deserves an award:
"Pathetic. Unbelievably, mindbogglingly pathetic. So pathetic that the word "pathetic" has been removed from the dictionary and replaced with the phrase "Peep Attack Widget".
It creates something that looks like a yellow dog turd(though you do have the choice of purple) that just sits there. And if you want more than one you have to add them manually, though its a mystery why anyone would bother to take the time for such a lame gag (you could add multiple iterations of the clock for the same effect, except that might actually be useful). As far as pranks go I'd rate this well below the old "kick me" sign on the back, if only because of the wasted programming effort.
Nobody but an imbecile will find this even remotely funny. You could try it on your co-workers, but expect an express ticket to Punchinthefaceville.
Why isn't it possible to award negative stars? (10/4/2005, Version: 1.0)"
Absolutely amazing. Why does anyone care that much about a Peep widget? So much so that they take the time to organize their thoughts into paragraphs. Sorry, to have wasted your time TalkingMooseFan. It was not my intention to force you to download and use something that you obviously have no use for. Did you really think that this was something serious? And that the "developer", me, would feel bad after reading your slanderous remarks. I guess you are not aware of the fact that I didn't submit this widget to MacUpdate, they took the liberty of putting it there themselves. They even went so far as to change the description and add the word "ducks" to the search properties. Honestly, what kind of people hang around MacUpdate looking at new freeware for the sake of bashing it. Is that some sort of release for nerds or something?
Next we have this little insight from "anonymous"
"can you not just drag ANY widget out onto the dashboard a bunch of times and have the same effect? or does a bunch of peeps elicit a different response than say, a bunch of thesaurus widgets? (10/6/2005, Version: 2.0)"
I think that a bunch of Peeps does in fact elicit a different response than a bunch of thesaurus widgets. If you don't believe that, then well, I guess you don't know the difference between a thesaurus and a Peep. Here are the definitions:
Thesaurus (provided by Wikipedia): The word thesaurus, New Latin for treasure, was coined in the early 1820s. Besides its meaning as a treasury or storehouse, it more commonly means a listing of words with similar, related, or opposite meanings. For example, a book of jargon for a specialized field; or more technically a list of subject headings and cross-references used in the filing and retrieval of documents (or indeed papers, certificates, letters, cards, records, texts, files, articles, essays and perhaps even manuscripts), film, sound recordings, machine-readable media, etc.
Peep (also provided by Wikipedia): Peeps are small marshmallow candies which are shaped into baby chickens, rabbits, and other animals. Peeps are primarily used to fill Easter baskets. They are made from marshmallow, sugar, gelatin, and carnauba.(Seriously, look it up.)
Peeps obivously win here when it comes to the humor factor.
Now this last one is not negative, it is just uniformed. It comes from "macsimumnews.com":
3) Peep Attack Pro is an arcade-like game for the Dashboard.
They were apparantely listing the top 3 downloads from DashboardWidgets.com, only they are actually listed the last 3 widgets added. Not sure how on earth they came up with "arcade-like game".
In the end I must say the majority of responses have been very good, and some brave souls even defended the widget. Thanks guys, you are the good ones.
K. Panda
