Don't eat yellow snow, don't read yellow journalism

Yellow Journalism as defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica:

the use of lurid features and sensationalized news in newspaper publishing to attract readers and increase circulation

Or a blog post on the Houston Press. I saw this first tweeted by Strippertweets then posted in more detail on titsandsass.com about somebody outing the AngryStripper. Periodically I hear things and see things that make me cringe. This story is really pathetic.

The author’s complete lack of concern about a person’s safety is horrid. He puts her full name in the headline. After that he post’s her LinkedIn page. Then he does something that really is pathetic. He post’s that there is only one person in the state of Texas with her name. That’s all but giving out her home address. Exactly how much information does he have to give out to make his point?

What I find really offensive is the article try's make the her look like a villain. Her co-worker's were furious at her for flaunting expensive clothes at the office. Flaunting wealth is obnoxious, but infuriating? He makes it sound like she's flogging peasants in the parking lot with a Louis Vuitton bag. I can imagine the conversation her co-workers are having "if she wear's another pair of Christian Louboutin shoes in today, I'm so going to HR and complaining". Seriously, how petty are folks at the Houston Chronicle? How does the way she dress change the way she writes? I'm curious if the guys in her office were so furious at her they quit hitting on her. I really doubt it.

He also tries to play up the double life style. Somehow she was slipping up mentioning that her injured hand was making it hard to write. She actually mentions in quite a few of her posts that she works as a journalist. He probably just read a few posts then scan them till they found the a couple of images. The fact she wanted a make a book deal somehow is a corrupt thing. A journalist wanting to make a book deal? That's just crazy talk.

Of course those clothes we're purchased with "stripper" money. Because you only pay rent and buy food with honest money. Stripper money is only for frivolous things like clothes and cosmetics. They also fail to mention that she does volunteer work at a hospital. Its a lot easier to hate somebody if they are totally self absorbed. If they aren't just forget to mention the good things so they look like they are.

The really sad part is that if she made money selling paintings she did at night instead of stripping, nobody would even look twice. Typically if you met a twenty something who was successfully self-employed and able to afford nice things you'd be impressed with them. They would somebody most people would look up to. Mention that she is a stripper and suddenly it all changes? I was driving a prehistoric Plymouth and struggling to just survive at that age. Despite the fact by any standards she is very successful she will probably be considered at "former stripper" for the rest of her life. She could win an Oscar like Diablo Cody and still not shake the label.

It's like dog years

A perfectly valid unit of time in a strip club is a song. It’s pretty common to hear things like “there’s time. I don’t go up for six songs” or “gotta hurry, I’ve only got two songs”. Typically a song is between three and four minutes long. The length of the song is set by the DJ who usually ends the song at the appropriate time. I’ve measured the average length of the songs occasionally, using the handy lap counter feature on my iPod nano. During the day the songs run will run from 4 to 5 minutes, at night the songs are 3 minutes. You actually get more time for your money if you go into a club during the day. For this post I’ll assume the song length is three minutes.

I’ll forever be frustrated by dancers who take off into the dressing room for a couple songs and leave me waiting for what feels like an eternity. I think dancers lose track of the fact two songs for her and two songs for me are two different things. Two songs equal six minutes of time. If a dancer works a six hour shift (360 minutes) those two songs will represent roughly 1.67% of the total time she spends in the club. If I spend one hour in the club (60 minutes) those two songs will represent 10% of the total time I will spend there. It’s kind of like dog years. Those two songs will feel six times longer to me than her.

If I wait four songs the numbers get worse. That’s 3.34% for her and 20% of my time. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a strip club that could survive without the live entertainment. The drinks are horribly overpriced, the music is too loud and not what I like. The furniture is miserable and lighting is bad. Once you hang out at a club the novelty fades quickly. The novelty at some club’s fades the second you walk in the door. It can really miserable waiting for a dancer in a club.

Actually making customers wait is a passive aggressive way some dancers deal with customers. They are happy at the thought the customer is stuck waiting for them. When your job requires you to interact with customers on a personal level this will happen. You wouldn’t be a human if the dick heads didn’t get you down. But don’t take it out on the good customers. If you drive away the good customers you’ll be stuck with the dick heads.

Sometimes it hurts to read the ads

I’m setting my snark mode to eleven. I admit up front on this post I’m being heavy handed. Ultimately I am a customer, so everything I do is from that point of view. I feel like I'm mostly fair, except for one topic. There is one thing about the strip club world that is just so stupid I can’t look at it with doing a face palm every time. What is this black hole of cultural despair? The monthly magazine strip club advertisement. Every time I look at these ads my IQ drop slightly. I’ve decided to create a secret decoder ring for those folks who can’t believe the ads are really as bad as actually are. The following blog post is completely unfair. I don’t care. They are idiots.

Here are the most common points made on virtually every Strip club ad and what they really mean.

Strip club ad claim #1: We have ice cold beer.

What does this really mean? We have a functional refrigeration system. Nothing more. When I walk into a club with naked woman on stage do I care if the beer is ice cold? No. I’d be happy if they just had a bigger selection of beer than the local 7-11. Most strip clubs don’t. They have a couple taps of horrible, water down, over priced, least offensive product they can sell to the largest demographic. Its miserable stuff only made tolerable only because of its proximity to boobs.

Strip club ad claim #2: We have the friendliest wait staff in town.

No you don’t. The ads make is sound like their wait staff is the only friendly one in town and all the other waitresses are just axe wielding homicidal maniacs. They are all axe wielding homicidal maniacs. Especially when you tip the 25 cents on an $18 dollar drink order. Actually the wait staff is your best friend at the club. Take care of you waitress every chance you get. She can make your life so much better when you run into a psycho stripper. Most waitresses are all the same. If you treat them right they will treat you right.

Strip club ad claim #3: We have comfortable chairs and cozy VIP booths.

No you don’t. You have furniture that most humans would throw away after a nuclear apocalypse. Let’s be realistic, you’ve got beat up furniture and couches you couldn’t give away at Goodwill. Periodically, I feel the need to burn all my clothes I wear to a strip club. I recently had a chance to see the couches from a strip club outside in the light of day. It was disturbing. I understand that a strip club is hard on the assets. But it’s nothing to brag about.

Strip club ad claim #:4 Come see our special event, it’s so special.

Except for the flyer taped the door that you don’t read anyway, you wouldn’t know anything special is going on except the DJ is a little more incoherent than usual. I have walked out of the club a couple times not realizing that there was a “major event” going on until I saw the sign on the door when I left. Stapling decorations from the Dollar tree on to a couple walls does not create an epic event. The only thing I found consistent about special events is that they screws up the drink service. The waitresses just spend their time tripping over crappy decorations trying to get to the bar.

Strip club claim #5: We have the hottest dancers.

Of course you do, all the other clubs just herd cattle on to the stage. The reality is that most of your dancers worked at other clubs and will bolt to new clubs as soon as you jack up the stage fees or do something else completely stupid. I know you have to say you have the best dancers in the ad. But try and figure out some sort of other angle. Like maybe you have really hot dancers that can carry on a conversation longer than “Wanna dance?” That’d be awesome.

Strip club claim #6: We have an address.

The club’s address is usually tucked away unobtrusively on the bottom of the ad or next to the logo. Most of the time you’d wouldn’t notice it, The reality is THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT FUCKING ITEM ON YOUR AD! Unless the customer can find your club everything else on the ad is pointless. Seriously, most of the people reading your ad probably don’t know where you are. Who cares if you have friendly wait staff and the hottest dancers with classiest furniture if you are lost in the Bermuda Triangle. Your ad looks just like all the other ads in the magazine. If there is one thing you want your customer to know is where to find you. Make sure that when they see the ad they come away with that information.

OK, blood pressure lowering, bile depleted. Now I’m can go to bed knowing I just made the world a little bit better for truth, justice and the strip club way.

Character Counts

I follow a lot of dancers on twitter. It’s interesting to see real time reactions to situations then hear or read about them later. If funny at times to see dancers and customer complain about the same basic thing but from complete different points of view. One of these complaining points recently is about false promises. A dancer unleashed a rather vehement series of tweets about some jerk customer who flashed a bunch of cash, but didn’t spend in penny on her. This reminded me of a few customer rants where they complained about dancers who promised a lot more than they delivered.

There is certain expectations when you go into a strip club. The first is that the entertainers will take their clothes off and customers will tip them. From there the options continue, there will probably be tables dances, lap dances, etc etc. Dancer or anybody else selling something you approach each customer trying to figure out how much can you make versus how much its going to cost you. How much for how much. In my work world it’s usually time and travel. There are customers in any business that are so difficult to deal with. They require so much attention and buy so little they aren’t worth the time.

If you think there is going to be a big payoff you are much more likely to hang in there longer. It’s the sales paradox, how much time and money are you willing to spend in order to make the sale? This makes the dancer vulnerable to manipulation. If some guy is flashing money and looks like he going to spend it she'll invest her time on him. From the customer side if the dancer acts like she'll do more he just spends more is pretty much the same deal. A false promise of a big payout to get a short term take away.

Some times it just a power trip on the customers part. They just like manipulating the dancer. It's actually pretty pathetic. If you think waving a bunch of money so you can slam some dancer, telling her too bad she's not worth it, the you should probably be spending your money on therapy, not strippers. Dancer’s who promise customers anything just to get their money isn’t any better. It’s deception in both cases.

It’s all to easy to forget that there is a person on the other side of the transaction. I’m not a walking wallet. Treat me like one and go somewhere else. Recently a dancer I’ve never met before sat down with me. With ten minutes she told me that we were going to be “best friends” and we should make plans for dinner. Yeah, right. You’ve known me for 600 seconds, I’m old enough to be your father, and you want to got out to dinner together. I’m not really buying this and I’m really not buying any dances from you.