Let’s say you own a small luggage company.
Sales are slow…you’ve got a crappy website…you can’t seem to get anybody to follow you on Facebook and Twitter. You need a brilliant marketing strategy.
Then it hits you…
“I know what I’ll do!! Everyone thinks gluten-free is a big joke. So I’ll say that our luggage is gluten-free as an April Fool’s joke. My god…I’m brilliant!!! Who cares if it will alienate 7% of my potential market? Aren’t I just the best?”
Actually…no. You’re a total a**wipe.
So SkyRoll is the company and here is what they tweeted yesterday: “@SkyRoll_luggage introduces the first gluten-free luggage to make travel healthier.”
Yeah…I know…totally freaking lame.
Not only did they tweet it, but actually wrote a complete press release around it. Here’s the link.
So Erin Smith, a fellow celiac advocate, called them out on it, saying it hurts the celiac community as it makes it more difficult for us to be taken seriously.
Their response? “How do you not get the joke? You’ve heard of April Fools day, right?”
Forget the fact that they tweeted it on March 31st. Forget the fact that even someone with the best sense of humor would find it just stupid. Forget the fact that they retweeted it again today. And forget the fact that they just added a third-grade level “celiac disclaimer” on their press release apologizing.
The question is…why is this funny?
No really…why is gluten-free luggage funny?
Is it funny in the same way Trader Joe’s says all of their greeting cards are gluten-free?
Is it funny in the same way that a top automobile company has a billboard that says their vehicles are gluten-free?
Please tell me…what am I missing? And don’t say it’s a sense of humor.
It’s April Fools and surprise, surprise…the joke is still on us.
Here’s their Facebook page. They’re fair game.
Wow. I read the “press release” and that was just really lame. Even if I didn’t have celiac, it wouldn’t be funny. What a great business strategy, publish something that’s not even remotely clever, sounds like it was written by a 10 year old, and is offensive to potential consumers.
Marketing 101
I can’t even… Don’t get me started!
they added: “The following is an acknowledged spoof press release, it is not factual, and should not be reported upon as such. Apologies to anyone suffering with celiac disease”
gosh, that seems so sincere. (where’s the eye-rolly emoticon thingy)
If they were sorry, they simply would have retracted it. Feh.
I typically have a laid back sense of humor. I’m not one of those people that is easily offended and demanding a public apology. However, this just wasn’t funny. Not in a “I’m a Celiac and find this offensive” kinda way…but in a “my two year old cousin could write something better than this” way. I told them. I also told my mom (who is not Celiac) about it and she said I needed to lighten up.
So there ya go. Apparently, we take our health too seriously. If ya can’t beat ’em, join ’em, eh?
I guess this is controversial, but I think the press release is funny, or at least funny enough to be an online April Fools joke, which I grant you is a low bar.
I liked this line: “When asked how or why luggage would contain gluten in the first place, he said he ‘was looking into this.'”
More dumb GF April Fools jokes can be found at my own blog today. They come from someone (me) who actually has celiac disease, which means I can make all the jokes I want about it without being offensive. Right? Right?
Happy April Fools Day!
Humor is fair game within the community 😉
GD-
Idiots. Skyroll can kiss my ass. Hey, maybe I can pay them for their idiot joke product with my new gluten free money?!?!?
Best to you GD,
Jersey Girl
—————————————————————–
“I need you around
To remind me what not to become.”
Nirvana
JG
Thanks for my April Fools Day laugh out loud!
If I ever have to be in a foxhole, I hope I have someone with your spunk along side me.
Hap
I’m to old to quote Nirvana but I am learning from some of your prior quotes.
Exactly…
When someone asks my Sr VP marketing buddy how his day is going, his immediate reply is usually “Unbelievable”, which of course can be unbelievably bad or unbelievably great; however, he is always honest and remains no less than the marketing genius he is without imposing his good or bad fortune on anyone else.
“Unbelievably Insensitive & Bad Marketing” was my initial reaction to this gluten free luggage marketing debacle – April Fools Day notwithstanding.
My second reaction was now I can empathize just a tiny bit more with my brothers, sisters and friends who have courageously suffered through racism and all other manner of atrocious discriminatory behavior inflicted upon those who are different or less fortunate than the Inflictors of atrocious behavior. I am not placing Celiac Disease on the same plateau as racism or any other such serious discriminatory issues afflicting humanity; however, insensitive “jokes” like this one will continue to push CD/gluten free into becoming more of a public challenge than it should be without advocates like GDude. Such misinformation and inappropriate behavior by lunkheads causes us to personally experience what it is like for someone to ridicule us and/or our situation for no reason other than the Inflictors of Discrimination are ignorant, they think their comments are cute and/or they are intentionally meanspirited.
My third reaction was to consider suggesting that Jimmy Fallon write a “Thank You” note to Dr Oz for single handedly pronouncing “gluten free” as complete BS and a Scam while confusing “CD as a medical requirement to eat gluten free” with “unhealthy producers of gluten free crap” in 30 seconds or less. I suspect Dr Oz and/or uniformed insensitive compadres like him played their part in this marketing debacle.
PS – on a personal note, after 17 months of diligently GF, my “neck to knees” CT scans reveal I am now cancer free with only a few healing reactive lymph nodes and a leftover small cyst on my kidney. GFF – GLUTEN FREE FOREVER!!!
GDude and Fellow Celiacs/NCGIs Keep Informing the Uninformed and Intentionally Ignorant!!!
Wise words Hap! And a BIG congrats and WOOHOO on your great CT scan results! 🙂
Spot on, as usual dude… I dream about a world where gluten free food is readily available everywhere, and where people don’t judge or joke about you by the color of your intestines… because we are not all the same inside… sigh….
Heather
I’ve thought of your lovely comment several times this week and again today as I am getting ready to attend the funeral this morning of a dear friend who died of pancreatic cancer this week.
Your statement gave me the idea, as I get ready to dine at a new restaurant tonight, to consider showing my personal collection of my GI’s 8 pages of color prints of my esophagus, stomach, small & large intestines on gluten next time I get an eye roll or less than believing acknowledgement from restaurant people or anyone else for that matter.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Sorry, but it is your fault. That’s hilarious. I have Gluten-intolerance and numerous food allergies, and that’s just plain funny. It’s so ridiculous, I don’t see how anyone could take it seriously.
No one takes it seriously William. That’s not the point. You know what…I don’t even feel like explaining the point. It’s been said too many times.
Like children it sounds like they would rather get negative attention than none at all. What better way to get hits than be able to tag something with the words “gluten free”? A bonus was being featured here on your site that I’m pretty confident has much more traffic than what they get on theirs. If you also put their name out there on Facebook, Twitter, and online they get even more attention and can gather a few “gluten haters” to lend some support. Like knowing when to discipline an errant child or ignore them, sometimes you have to determine whether it is worth it. I’m not sure if this wasn’t best just ignored. Just a thought..
I hear ya Miss Dee and I did contemplate it. And if it was done in a remotely clever way, I probably would have let it be. But the fact that it was so lame pushed me to go ahead. And now that on their FB page, they are being ungodly defensive and insulting, I’m now glad I did.
I do get it, Dude. If they had said “calorie free” or a something that isn’t related to the treatment of a disease, it wouldn’t have pushed any buttons. On the other hand the joke was an unknown blip on the radar for probably 99.9% of the population. (As a matter of fact, it probably still is.) I just think sometimes in this particular forum it is best to use a sledge hammer on the really big flies that have reached a broader audience than a suitcase company that reaches the few who are looking to replace their luggage. I am enjoying reading the comments on both sides of the argument.
I’m here for your entertainment 😉
Miss Dee
I understand your point; however, as a marketing strategy, it was perfectly acceptable for GDude to call attention to this bogus product’s initially presumable ignorant, but now obvious intentional, insensitivities toward NCGI and NCGS sufferers. GDude positively furthered Celiac/NCGI education in the process. What little attention this bogus product receives from “gluten free haters” will never overcome the refusals to purchase now ingrained in the Celiac/NCGI community and other potential consumers who are now more sensitive to our plight as a result of the bogus product’s continuing to open its intentionally derogatory marketing mouth. What may have started as a harmless joke is no longer remotely funny.
Personally, since I don’t know whether SkyRoll Luggage is a bogus, cheap, complete BS scammy product or not and, I’ll never buy one now to find out, let’s throw in a April Fools Day joke disclaimer for my entire comment just in case some poor “gluten free hating idiots” accidentally buy one.
Dear Gluten Dude and fellow readers,
I am a huge Gluten Dude fan and have read every post since subscribing two years ago. However, I have noticed that, over time, the blog is more and more focused on all the wrongs being committed against the gluten-free community, and has a distinct tone of victimized self-pity. I have celiac disease and take it very seriously, but I also understand that gluten-free is a fad to many, many people who don’t realize that there are reasons to avoid gluten other than being thin or cool. Honestly, I found the SkyRoll ad hilarious, because I know that it was aimed at the fad, not at me, and I find great delight in anything that mocks those people who tell me, “you’re so lucky to have celiac disease, because you’re thin and healthy”. I agree with the point you make about the harm caused to the celiac community, when gluten-free is not taken seriously, but that ship has long sailed. Rather than making a great show of being offended every time some person or company demonstrates their ignorance, in hopes of shaming them into opening their minds, it might be better to just laugh. I’m secure enough in my own understanding to take opportunities to educate others without stomping my foot and saying, “I don’t like you, big meanie”, which is really the sense I get from this blog most days. So, I believe I’ll say farewell, and best of luck.
Suzanne
Personally, I do my best to bring of mix of calling companies out, posting a fellow celiacs’ request for help, and humor. Like I said…I do my best. I appreciate the time you spent here. I will just never think making fun of gluten-free people is funny. That’s just me.
Suzanne
Since you said farewell, I’ll leave this comment for those new readers who are interested. I found Gluten Dude almost 2 months ago and I’ve found most everyone here to be incrediably honest and supportive in their own individual ways, including Gluten Dude, who is simpl;y trying to educate folks about Celiac Disease and being gluten free in his own way. The various views and differences of opinions make this community interesting. I certainly don’t harbor any “victimized self pity” – I just want to be healthy and play golf again – I don’t need or want anyone’s pity. This is a great supportive place to get an education about Celiac Disease and being gluten free.
Further, since I am doing everything I can to not suffer from cancer again by ingesting gluten, I just don’t see anything funny about the general public being constantly misinformed, even if unintentionally for the sake of humor, about how “riduclously funny and faddy being gluten free” is! If someone wants to be funny – they have that right – just as Gluten Dude has the right to educate their ignorance. He’s obviously not trying to stop anyone from having fun.
Suzanne, your own words indicate that there is still much work to be done. If you read Gluten Dude for 2 years and there are still “wrongs being committed against the gluten-free community” on a regular basis, the “harm ship” has not even left port yet – it sure didn’t sail a long time ago. There is still much educational work to be done. I sure don’t want to get “glutened” again because someone in a restaurant I trust was misled to think being gluten free is only a fad and that it is funny to coat my Redfish with flour just to see if I’ll notice. Sorry, I just can’t find any humor in that again.
So, as I have heard Gluten Dude say before, you advocate the way you want to advocate and please let Gluten Dude advocate as he sees fit – it’s a big ole gluten filled world out there. I just didn’t see why it was necessary for you to stomp your foot and tell Gluten Dude and his readers that we are all big meanies before you said “Bye”. As my grandmother used to say, don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out. I said that – not Gluten Dude. Don’t mess with our Gluten Dude!
I’ll shut up now and see y’all in another month or so.
Thanks Hap. I have no ill-will for anybody who parts ways. Was grateful for the time she was here. And yes…much work to be done still.
I don’t find it offensive, but I also don’t find it funny. It’s just stupid, like most public April Fool’s Day jokes.
I don’t disagree. It was just so totally lame.
Wow, you guys are taking this way out of hand. Posting to their Facebook page so your hounds can attack them too? Despicable. It was a joke. You didn’t get it? That’s fine. Reading through this blog, and these comments, and beginning to think a person’s sense of humor and general kindness is obtained by eating gluten. So many of you guys are total jerks.
Ah Seth…I saw your post on their Facebook page. Either you work for them or are one big Skyroll fan. Look…the fact is it was ignorant and stupid. If the majority of people came to me and said it was actually funny and I that I missed the joke, I’d take in on the chin and tip my cap. But the fact that the high majority are pretty insulted and spewing some good old celiac passion tells me they completely missed the boat. And their reaction to the complaints to tell us all to lighten up, etc. means they have zero business sense. That is all.
I actually work for a university in Northern Colorado, and had never heard of SkyRoll before today. I just thought it was hilarious.
I don’t go around complaining about every little crack people make about narcoleptics. I take it all in stride and laugh. Rat Race was a terrible movie, but seeing Rowan falling asleep all over the place was funny, even though that isn’t how narcolepsy works.
It just seems to me that gluten-free folks are pretty high on their horses lately. It’s really annoying. I couldn’t imagine going off on someone that made a joke about “narcolepsy shoes” or something else related to my issues when, clearly, it’s an April Fools joke. I’m just not in the Lord Hienmitey mindset like so many Celiac folks I see, so I just don’t understand. Sorry.
Dear Seth
I’ve seen GDude’s pup, which is no hound, and my old black lab will be 14 in July. Other than that, I don’t have any “hounds” and I have no idea what you’re talking about.
You only cement our points by coming on this site and calling us jerks. If you take time to really read and understand what we wrote, hopefully, you can comprehend our concerns. I made my reasonable comments to this celiac community. I don’t do Facebook and probably never will.
Further, since I’m a lawyer, I’ve been called a lot worse than a jerk so my skin’s pretty thick. You can call and tell me how funny being gluten free is to you after you endure skin and esophogeal cancer, lose 35 lbs in 45 days, cough up fresh blood every time you get an upper respiratory infection (I could go on but it only gets less appetizing) solely from eating gluten. I am now getting healthy again and I don’t think gluten free jokes are funny yet especially when a restaurant worker flours my fish just to see if I notice. It’s 80 degrees today and my buddies are out playing 36 holes of golf today while I’m typing on this blog because I can’t swing yet – so I’m not in a very good mood anyway.
I’ve always had a good sense of humor and will continue to have one in the future – just not about gluten free jokes for awhile. Go talk to Jersey Girl above – she’s not as sweet tempered as me.
Hap
Goodness! I’m /really/ starting to think that common decency is also transferred into the human body via gluten…
You know what’s fun? Trying not to fall asleep at work, not being able to concentrate, being worried about driving, completely blanking in conversations, travel, work, play, etc because you fell into a sleep-like state for a few seconds. You know what else is funny? Not knowing what’s wrong with you for years. Wondering why, no matter how much or how little sleep you get, you still suck at what you do because you can’t be fully present in any situation. That’s really funny too! Walking into things, trying not to drift off while commuting to work, sneaking naps at work so I won’t get fired for crashing randomly and being unable to function. It’s really quite hilarious!
Tell me how bad your disease is, blah blah blah. Someone always has it worse. I’d hate to throw up blood again. I’d hate to lose a bunch of weight and not know why. I’d hate to have cancer cells ravage my body. I’d hate to have HIV. I’d hate to be in Guinea right now and be one of those poor people with Ebola.
Stop whining about your “poor wittle feewings” and see a joke for what it is. I see Rowan Atkinson or others make fun of narcolepsy and I laugh. It’s funny. Life is funny. I can eat gluten so I can see that. I won’t hold it against you though (as I stated in a previous comment, it seems humor is something that comes from gluten, so you probably don’t have a sense of it. I’m sorry for that!)
Dear Seth
Are you one of those “internets trolls” I’ve only heard about?
I’m not a whiner and never have been. I just don’t find gluten free jokes funny yet and probably won’t for awhile. How about being patient with me or does that only work for you?
I know all about narcolepsy from one of my business partners. I learned about it while he was driving me down the interstate at 70 mph – I’m still not sure how we got the car safely stopped without killing someone. He’s a pretty funny guy but he doesn’t joke about that one yet.
I’m going walking now. Hope you have a good life.
Hap
I try to dissuade sniping in the comments as much as humanly possible here as I truly want people to be able to speak their mind. We can agree to disagree. I appreciate the convo.
I was talking to my wife that I felt bad I was accidentally trolling a gluten-free website. I thought it was a friend’s blog, otherwise I wouldn’t have been so blunt about it. You have my apologies for that. I still don’t understand the uproar for a joke though. You thought it was tasteless, and it struck close to him. I get it. That isn’t a reason to bully a person or company. I’ve seen the Facebook and Twitter comments about this, and what’s going on is totally bullying. It’s not cool, and you probably don’t see it as such, but that’s what this is.
Ah, reminds me of that time I was driving home from work, phased out, then when my consciousness snapped back seconds later I was in the median! Still scares the shit out of me, a decade later, but it makes for a funny story. I usually tell it after I tell the story of when I was learning to drive stick, and drove the first 5 miles with the E-brake on, wondering why it was so hard!
*home. Close to home, sorry!
Discussion is good. I hope I haven’t been offensive here. If so, I apologize.
Seth
I’m also glad you came back to join these fine people. Since I don’t FB or Tweet, I don’t know what other sites said or did, but this group is very supportive – maybe occasionally feisty, but always supportive.
I’d be glad to offer you a cold beer next time we discuss any topic if GDude will ever send me some of that Harvester and NewPlanet he raves about since I can’t get anything but Omission and Daura down here so far. I do miss an icy IPA.
See y’all in mid May.
Hap
I know I am new here but Hap, are you really drinking Omission????? Please, please don’t drink Omission. I will talk to the Harvester people and see if they will sell in your state. Where do you live? Oh man, are you in Mexico?
Nicole
Nicole
Thanks so much for your offered help but I’ve never even sipped an Omission.
I can only drink water & green tea for the foreseeable future while I continue to heal from the inside out. I do miss my morning coffee but not worth the pain.
However, I will let you know when I can move on to other more tasty drinks because the Harvester does sound worth the trouble of locating a source. I was just kidding GDude because he made the Harvester & New Planet sound so good.
I’ve always been happy that ice cream wasn’t alcohol or I could have a problem. One of the brighter spots of this CD was I ate more than 35 half gallons of Blue Bell Ice Cream (only the gluten free flavors) this winter to keep my weight up – still lost some weight but my total cholesterol was only 162. That’s a bright spot. Everything is starting to normalize now and I’m starting to feel healthy again – usually only good salads, lean meats, veggies, Cool Whip Lite and lots of Blueberries instead of ice cream now.
Thanks again – hopefully we can shoot for the Harvesters later this year.
Hap
Thank God, you had me worried that you were drinking that stuff. Harvester is the best! I live in Portland so I go to the pub on occasion. But I never leave there under $30….for my tab alone. But to have 6+ beers on tap, it’s heaven. I actually got tears in my eyes the first time I went. And Deschutes has a pretty good gluten free beer as well.
As for the ice cream, be careful of that sugar!
Nicole
I love Portland & Oregon! I was returning home from a golf trip to Bandon Dunes in 2010 when I began getting really sick. I had just walked 85 miles in 6.5 days playing 13 rounds of golf in one of the prettiest places on earth. I went from being as healthy as I had been since my 20’s when I left Portland to as close to dying as I want to get anytime soon by 2012. I have not flown since the Portland trip in 2010 and it is one of the first flights I want to take back to Portland and Bandon when I start flying again hopefully in 2015. You are fortunate to live in Portland!
I know I am lucky. 🙂 When you get here, I will take you for a beer.
Seth, man I am so glad you changed your tune. I was gunna go into the nastier details of Celiac disease on you. Feel free to read the post about how all of us have crapped ourselves in public. I will not mention the other stuff since I don’t know if Gluten Dude has posted about them.
Thanks for thinking twice,
Nicole
No worries Seth. I appreciate you chiming back in. Skyroll has removed all mentions of the joke from their Twitter and Facebook account so I would think that even they realized it was a poor idea. And that happened because of us speaking up for ourselves. I don’t consider that bullying, although some of the comments on his FB page perhaps crossed the line. We’re quite the passionate community.
Yeah, our family seriously laughs about the time when Mom fell asleep while driving and wrecked the truck. It’s a good thing the airbags didn’t go off, but no one was majorly injured worse than glue and a good chiropractor could fix up (then again, she also just had neck surgery…which may or may not be related to how many car wrecks she’s been in). Waking up in mid-air will scare the crud out of you (her and me, in the passenger seat).
I think it would be a good general rule for companies not to use things that decent-sized groups of people are very highly sensitive to as April Fools pranks, even if a larger number of people would laugh their butts off.
I’m not one of the people who’s highly sensitive about it. Heck, my dad calls it a “glutton”-free diet, ’cause I can’t eat all the things he’s a glutton for. I’ve gotten a pizza marked “glued and free” instead of “gluten-free” before (which Dad said was appropriate in some ways, because it tasted like cardboard, but not in others, as they did charge him for it.
And yeah, mentioning medical issues that don’t have a full answer yet will almost ALWAYS get some kind of advice from a GF community because many of us went GF in the first place because we couldn’t get good answers and many of us are still looking further because going GF helped, but didn’t fix it all. Personally, I’m looking at Terry Wahls’ protocol – whole foods diet heavy on the veggies (her book is The Wahls Protocol), which is so far beyond GF it’s unreal. A friend’s kid just got told no corn, no soy – he looked sorrowful when I said we were having hotdogs, then gave me a big hug when I told him I had some he could eat that his mother had approved. We all know there are things out there that we haven’t tried yet, and we all know it’s hard to track down what might be best for us, so we’re all more than willing (no, seriously…try this on an actual FORUM and see how many answers you get) to give suggestions on what to try and how to make it easier.
Dear Seth,
in case you see this, I read your message about trying to stay awake, etc. and it sounds like you’d be a perfect candidate to try a GF diet. There’s something called “gluten ataxia” that may have some bearing on your issue. I know that being really tired is definitely a symptom many of us with Celiac or ncgi can relate to.
Second, for me, sulfites also make me really tired. Avoiding them is, imho, harder than avoiding gluten. Nearly all pre-packaged products contain sulfites in one form or another, as does the water that sprays on to fresh produce in grocery stores.
I won’t comment on the rest of it, since others are doing a fine job without me.
Thanks so much for the advice! I’ve actually tried a variety of diets, sleep schedules, medications etc. I finally found something that helped, which helped lead us to the narcolepsy diagnosis. Our bodies sure are weird, aren’t they?
Hap – did someone at a restaurant purposely flour your fish? Really? After you asked for gluten free?
Thankful,
Thanks so much for your kind words and heartfelt “WooHoo”, which are greatly appreciated. It has been a battle but well worth the struggle now that I believe I will live – like many others on this site, I wasn’t sure for a few months. Not many people are much worse than my Mom and still alive. It was funny for Seth to call me a whiner – he should meet my Mom and experience all she has endured in the last 20 years and she still gets up laughing and with a smile most every day – and that’s with her bone biopsy being 89% cancer cells this time last year, 3 prior brain aneurisms, 2 brain surgeries and Stage 4 lymphoma 3 times. I don’t share those stats to whine, but only to encourage others that “going gluten free” may save their lives!
Unfortunately, someone didn’t think I would notice the flour. They now know I notice. However, the owners and usual chef are great caring people, which is why we eat there so much and it’s a + they have such great food. We have a few wonderful restaurants which really care and make me feel safe to eat with them. There are still some cross contamination accidents and I have to explain it’s more than an allergy – cancer and autoimmune for special emphasis every now and then. This whole process is unusual for me because I was always able to eat anything that didn’t eat me first until the last 17 months – should have been at least somewhere between 4 and 20 years if I had only known.
I try not to “put on my lawyer voice” as my daughter chastises; however, I tend to get aggressive when I and my friends are called jerks by someone who obviously doesn’t understand that there are some topics about which jokes may be inappropriate. Such people should be able to understand when others don’t find such jokes funny for good reasons. We don’t have to laugh about everything to have a good sense of humor.
If visitors to this site read our comments today, Everyone never said the press release wasn’t funny, it just wasn’t funny to me. It is fine to laugh at the bogus press release, it was not offensive, but it was also OK for Gluten Dude to make his points in his role as advocate to generate discussion about the issue. GDude’s goal is education and he does a great job. The whole process brought attention to the problem that being gluten free is a serious matter for some people. I don’t care if “people” joke about being gluten free; however “people” should likewise not care when GDude points out some jokes are inappropriate and people like me support GDude. My heritage is Scotch, Cajun, Cherokee Indian and a big German Grandpa I loved very much whose attitude was very similar to Jersey Girl – so it’s pretty amazing I’m as sweet tempered as I am.
I plan to visit again after May 12 when my Mom has her next CT scans – her only treatment currently is being gluten free (since Nov 2013), her chemo was stopped before scheduled and she is feeling better most every day. I can testify that being gluten free for some folks is in no way complete BS or a scam! Now I can laugh a happy laugh about that and it’s OK for me to tell people who want to listen!!!! People who don’t want to listen can talk to Jersey Girl since my Grandpa is no longer with us.
I agree. It’s disgusting and idiotic. But I grew up with a media family. I’ve always heard there’s no such thing as bad publicity. I mean, we are talking about them, right?
Oy vey.
I’ve been getting frustrated with some of the nonsense too. I took April Fools as a good day to let off a bit of steam, and pranked my whole beach town. I wrote it up on the blog.
It did wonders for the “facepalm” bleaghs of reading lovely inept marketing like this.
Celiac disease is a disease, friends! Wake up and smell the sensitivity!
It seems to me that the only buzz the press release is generating is here, among people that will not buy the product. That’s a marketing failure. No wonder I’ve never heard of the company. May they rest in peace.
They just removed all mentions of the joke on Twitter and on Facebook. Score one for the community.
I thought it was funny. One thing this disease hasn’t taken away from me is my sense of humor.
This is why I feel so alone living an actual gluten free lifestyle.
Just posted this to their FB page:
Hi! I’m sure you have a great product but to have an “April Fool’s” joke that your product is gluten free is sophmoric, at best. Your disclaimer to those with Celiac Disease, now THAT is what I would call a joke!
I have a gigantic sense of humor, but I just did not think that this “spoof” was funny at all. And by that, I mean the premise of it.
now, John Pinette talking about gluten free?…he’s funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDh_cTOive8&list=RDFDh_cTOive8
OMG…I’m at work so I can’t watch… is this the guy who said: “I don’t know what gluten ins, but IT’S DELICIOUS!!!”
lol
“I’m fairly certain I’m mostly gluten”. 🙂
That was hilarious! I also seriously LOL’ed at the vegan one!
Yes! VERY funny! Just wish they didn’t make me watch an Olive Garden commercial in order to see that. Oh well….very funny!
Thanks for sharing it Irish Heart.
“Gluten is the reason to get up in the morning!” 🙂
Sadly, John Pinette has died. The media is discussing his weight along with his liver and heart disease. No mention of celiac disease. RIP 🙁
I learned of this today too. How terribly sad. I loved his standup. He could make anything funny, be he was also one of the few people who knew how to do gluten humor the right way. He will be missed very much.
Oh no……damn, I am sorry to hear this news 🙁
Yes it’s funny. I love that sense of humor. And i am a Gluten guy too.
I would also laugh at : Peanut free luggage, Contains no GMO plastic, No animals were hurt in the making of this baggage, Save a cotton plant, buy synthetic. etc….
Laughter, it’s funny, it’s free.
😉
How do I change the background on my blogger/blogspot to what I want?