Microsoft 1, blogosphere 0

Guys, the joke's on us. Big time.

Bloggers have been chortling all day over a goofy video made for Microsoft's sales team that made its way onto YouTube.

The video, "Rocking Our Sales," by "Bruce ServicePack and the Vista Street Band," is painfully lame. How bad? A friend from IBM who viewed the video said it made him rip out his spleen. That's pretty bad.

In short order, Microsoft was getting pilloried for not having a clue about cool. The House of Gates was so square, it was beyond lame. Gizmodo put up a post titled "Internal Microsoft Vista Video is as Painful as Videos Get", while Engadget chimed in with "Microsoft burns our eyes with Vista promo video." Not to be outdone, CrunchGear added its 2 cents with "Don't shoot the messenger: Microsoft internal promo video about Windows Vista is hard to watch."

Truth be told, I thought pretty much the same thing. Only one problem. They were messing with your heads.

"This video was a spoof (believe it or not)," said a Microsoft representative familiar with the reason behind the production. Apparently, it was a way for Microsoft to have some fun at its own expense.

"They thought folks internally would get a kick out of not taking themselves so seriously all the time, but some people thought that's exactly what they were being--serious. Anyway, this little piece of art came to life and has caused quite a few laughs in Microsoft's hallways."

Who woulda thunk it?

[Spartan_458]

I knew they weren't serious. Microsoft has enough dignity for that at least.

[weedhacker]

I dunno... I've seen Steve Ballmer's on stage "presence", and I would say this video (spoof or not) doesn't really stray too far from that. It isn't beyond belief that MS would produce such a thing, and then claim it to be something else once it got out of the bag.

[deep0dark]

Anyone who thought that that video was serious needs a professional evaluation, honestly.<br /><br />Not only that, but they are actually infinitely lamer than the people who they were laughing at.<br /><br />My God, I wouldn't want to be one of those bloggers who took it seriously. They now look like the most uncool dweebs that ever walked this planet. You got to feel sad for what they revealed themselves to be to the world. Über-dorky dweebs.

[Jon N.]

I agree with CrunchGear. VERY HARD TO WATCH! They should've put all that time, energy, &#38; money into making Windows a more secure, fragmentation-free, and stable OpSys, and stop wasting their time and assets (that you, the consumer, paid for by buying into Vista). Now this. Apple is having a field day in making Microsoft look absolutely ridiculous with its I'm a PC/MAC ads. Now, Apple doesn't need to. Microsoft can do it with their own money, and do a better job, as well!

[Far Star]

Oh yes, let's pillory them for having a bit of fun.<br /><br />I don't like M$ much but even I can tell this is them poking at themselves. Those that got suckered by this or are up in arms really need to chill. Maybe even take a break from blogging / commenting for a while because they are obviously taking THEMSELVES a bit to seriously.

[keith.r.benedict]

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that the marketing and audio/video guys don't do much software development. Which, conveniently, leaves them free to put together silly videos.

[charlie cooper]

Sorry but Crunchgear got it wrong. Think Borat.

[grayforge]

The sad thing is... Microsoft has become the kind of company people think this sort of thing (a crappy marketing commercial) can come from.

[The_Decider]

So because MS said it wasn't serious you believe it?<br /><br />That is the real kicker!<br /><br />It was real until MS got skewered by it and than claimed otherwise.<br /><br />Yes, MS is this hopelessly lame.

[charlie cooper]

nope. that's not it at all. <br /><br />when i first saw the video, my initial reaction was "holy ****, this is the most goofy video in creation." but if you think about it longer than two seconds, you'll understand that it's a spoof. have you ever watched any of the gates-ballmer video skits they've put together over the years? they've come up with some pretty funny ones over the years. like i wrote in an earlier post, think borat.

[Paul Skinner]

No. You can wax this one up and spin it all you like, but no one's going to buy that this is intentionally bad.<br /><br />This is bad, but honest, true bad. You can smell it.<br /><br />I hear you trying to sell the "Think Borat" angle. No. Borat was genius. This is bad.<br /><br />Look, it's an internal sales team promotional video. No one expects it to be good. But it's bad. The reason it is disturbing is because you can tell it's trying to be cool. It thinks it's being cool. The people who participated truely thought it was cool. Not "cool" cool, I mean not like "really cool!" but cool. And yet it's actually really bad. "Bad" bad.<br /><br />So let it lie, let it die a slow drawn out internet purgatorial death and never ever mention it again. Trying to spin this just dirties your hands.<br /><br />Bad.

[somepeter]

So lame. Now that they got exposed, MS is trying to say that it's a spoof. Yes, right. They should just stick to being uncool. MS should stick to being boring, boring here meaning making products that actually work.

[chustar]

@Jon N:<br />So, according to you, microsoft employees don't do anything but eat, drink and dream windows? This is kinda like google's 20% thing with thier employees. Why isn't anyone telling them to use their 20% to make google video better?

[kshepp]

There's a fine line between "so bad it's funny" and "so bad it makes you physically uncomfortable to watch."

[xgerrit]

Here's a hint that it might have actually been serious.... *You had to call to ask.*<br /><br />If it's not serious, then when they sing "our ecosystem is really great" is it sarcastic and it's assumed that their sales people think their ecosystem is just pretty good or sucks?<br /><br />Is it that much better to not have failed at being cool, but instead failed at creating a spoof? And failed so badly that people are creeped out by it?

[prodder_3]

You gotta be stupid as hell to get that video serious, really..

[deep0dark]

Look at all those Linux crybabies whining "but nooo, it's not truuue, they could not have fooled us, weeee are supposed to be the clever ones, not the evil empire, mommy i don't like to play any more now that I look like a overzealous dweeby dork" and on and on.

[weedhacker]

You know, MS fanboys come off just as "camp" as that video, except that they are serious... just like the video is. I don't see any inconsistencies there at all.

[Sinixstar]

oh come on.<br />i mean, i know the guys at ms might come off as pretty out of touch a lot of times (okay, most of the time) but I don't think you could get a room full people together on this planet who would look at this and be like "yea man, this is awesome! people are gonna be pumped!" <br />The type of people who sit down and want to believe that MS is so dumb that they'd make something like this for real - are exactly the type of people this video was supposed to be a middle finger to. Sorry bud - but the joke's on you.

[QASDISHGUY]

The worst part about this video is I installed SP1 and it crashed my computer. 3 days later, 4 support emails, a support chat, and 3 phone calls to Microsoft Support I gave up and reinstalled everything from scratch. All thanks to SP1.

[Drezen]

It seems in line with the Microsoft iPod packaging video and the iPod amnesty bin to me. I think there's a lot of people want to believe it's serious, purely so they can bash Microsoft with it.

[Life_on_Mars]

I have created several videos of this ilk for other Fortune 500 companies, and trust me, no one involved with it took it seriously. These things are always meant to poke fun at how the company and it's employees perceive themselves; if you think otherwise, take that tinfoil hat that blocks government/alien scanning of your thoughts off your head. I have been both a Mac and PC user for 25+ years and I DON'T CARE which one I use; they both have their foibles and assets. Brand loyalty is one thing, misplaced smugness is just plain rude.

[gomer43]

Coop, I don't think so much that Engadget et. al. was saying that MS was being serious. I think they were saying that the video sucks, period. It's an attempt at having fun, but it's still just stupid, not funny or fun.

[Norseman]

This is one of the best things I've seen come out of Microsoft recently. Seriously.

[weedhacker]

And better yet, watching it won't crash your PC! At least, I don't think it will.