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.

[deep0dark]

Anyone who thought that that video was serious needs a professional evaluation, honestly.

Not only that, but they are actually infinitely lamer than the people who they were laughing at.

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, & 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!

[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?

That is the real kicker!

It was real until MS got skewered by it and than claimed otherwise.

Yes, MS is this hopelessly lame.

[charlie cooper]

nope. that's not it at all.

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.

This is bad, but honest, true bad. You can smell it.

I hear you trying to sell the "Think Borat" angle. No. Borat was genius. This is bad.

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.

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.

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:
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?