We always knew that convincing people to lose weight in Cleveland was going to be uphill

It's painfully funny the way people opt to behave in batshit disregard of rational thinking. I get that the operators of the studio are protective of it. But to threaten police involvement and demand post deletions is just ludicrously ignorant. Then they go ahead and publish a comment "politely" defaming the blogger as a thief!? Wow.

Part of me hopes they take a breath and recognize how reactionary they're being, but part of me wants to be a fly on the wall when they call the Cleveland PD to press charges and the cops "politely" tell them to go fondu themselves.

A few weeks ago, I had dinner at a high-end restaurant here in SW Missouri (kind of BFE, near Lake Of The Ozarks). It epically failed to live up to its billing as a premier dining establishment, so I visited tripadvisor.com as well as rants/raves on craigslist.org to voice my displeasure. I was contacted by the restaurant owners and told to remove my posts on both sites, to which I replied with a heavy dose of lolling. They ended up flagging my posts, and I am still reposting to this day.

I'm showing my age: the late Westbrook Pegler exhorted his readers, too. Congratulations and fine company, that.

Not quite as much fun as The Oatmeal lawsuit and Operation: Bearlove Good Cancer Bad. The lawyer involved, Charles Carreon, has gone so batshit insane over the whole thing that in addition to suing Inman and IndieGoGo, he's also suing the National Wildlife Fund and the American Cancer Society.

http://www.popehat.com/2012/06/17/the-oatmeal-v-funnyjunk-part-iv-charles-carreon-sues-everybody/

I love how people are so clueless about media/technology/the blogosphere that their knee-jerk reaction to a bad review is "That MUST be illegal! I'm going to call the police/sue you for being MEAN."

There's a right way to handle bloggers who give you bad reviews -- and savvy businesses know it.

A friend of mine went to a food truck that specializes in cuisine from where he's originally from. He got awful service and sub-par food. So he wrote a funny, scathing blog about it. The food truck contacted him and said, "Let us make it up to you." They invited him back for some free food then asked him to give them some pointers about how they could improve. Guess what? He blogged about it, tweeted about it, and gave the food truck tons of good publicity.

" I am sending you this message to politely ask that you remove all the content about [the studio] from your blog and twitter and we will not get the Beachwood Police involved on this theft of services."

Looks an awful lot like blackmail to me. And last I checked, blackmail was illegal.

Blackmail is when you've done something wrong/embarrassing and been caught, then forced to pay money so the story will not come out. So, it's not blackmail, but it is coercion.

The gym may get a demonstration of the Streisand effect:

http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Please feel free to contact the police. Please record the call so the rest of us may be amused as well.

I'm sure the police have donuts, err, real crimes to keep them busy.

> Looks an awful lot like blackmail to me. And
> last I checked, blackmail was illegal.

Point taken... But it's often amusing how people imagine that the police will accept assignments as private muscle, Lucca Brazzi-style. I have a neighbor from, um, another nation on another continent, the kind of place where police can't be counted on to defend common community interests. And he loves to tell people he'll call the police when they ask him to pick up his yard or turn down his stereo or curb his dog or move his car etc.

I think this kind of puffery has shown up here before: It's repellent on its face, but so common that nobody's likely to get to cranked up. I've watched cops have to adjudicate some absolutely insane domestic squabbles... Stuff that was just ludicrously small-minded and petty.

And it wasn't even mine! I'm not sure being threatened with legal action on the internet is all that intimidating.

I have neighbours like that Crid. Parking is sometimes at a shortage in my street, so I might have to park 50 metres from my house. Big deal. But I left my car out the front of a small block of flats for a few days, right where they line up their garbage bins for emptying once a week. My bad, if someone had asked me to move it I would have apologised profusely. Instead, I found a note under the wiper with a rant about my stupidity, lack of consideration, etc, and ended with "if you do it again I will call the authorities".

I considered door knocking the block to find the anonymous coward involved (note was unsigned, naturally), not to start a fight, but out of genuine curiosity - exactly what authority did he/she intend to call in to bring down retribution on a car owner parked in a legal space on a public road? Where I live it's considered generally courteous not to park in front of bins waiting for collection, but there's no law about it.

The more some entity asserts their privacy, etc. rights against a private individual's First Amendment rights, the more they are likely to lose, IMHO.

The best thing is to go anywhere else and try to get positive comments.

> exactly what authority did he/she intend
> to call in

A "police report" isn't much of a threat. If it became a threat, you could start suing people (including police) and bring proportionate pain to other's lives in a hurry. Cops don't like to waste their time on idiot squabbles.

Speaking of law enforcement, this was more interesting than such things usually are. I'd seen the woman's picture in the paper a few months ago, but after reading the piece, the video was worth scanning a little, too.

It's a straightforward telling of a mundane series of events. But somehow the mundane things are as impressive as the animal forces... That's how evil works, I guess.

A "police report" isn't much of a threat.

I wasn't even vaguely worried about that. The police would check the vehicle registration was up to date, check it wasn't stolen, then refer the complaint to the local council. Parking is outside their jurisdiction, and as you say, not worth their time. If they felt energetic they might knock on my door and (probably quite politely) ask me to move it just to keep the peace.

and that is why it is ridiculous that you complain about a price when you never paid for the class.

Back on topic, this statement is insane. Do they not understand how reviews work? I'm yet to see a book critic say about their review copy "sure, $200 is a lot for this book, but I didn't pay for mine and it was great so I recommend you buy it". Or perhaps the author was thinking of going more than once?

> If they felt energetic they might knock on my
> door and (probably quite politely) ask me to
> move it just to keep the peace.

Exactly (though I was talking more about Amy's headline).

Thing is, I want cops to have the latitude for decisions like that. If the nice lady (gentlemen) LTW was about to move her (his) car anyway, AND they have nothing better to do, AND they think it might calm the complainant a bit, then whatever.

I live in a good-not-great neighborhood in L.A. In any number of circumstances, cops can be really brusque. But at least up until very recently, the city was HORRIBLY under-policed. They just did not have time. That's how the Rodney King riots started. I remember a small, exceedingly gentle protest by janitors in Century City about ten years ago that got broken up by policemen swinging batons to maim... They've been outnumbered, everyone knew it, and the policy was to apply maximal force to end any confrontation ASAP.

Things aren't that bad here any more. The expulsion of the Occupy Los Angeles last year could have been an absolute nightmare of violence and streaming video from Iphones... But the LAPD used enough manpower to break it up gently but irresistibly.

When cops have time (and character) to use it, judgment is a wonderful thing.

PS- This has got to be the biggest patch of outright fabrication on the Wikipedia servers.

Threatening to call the police used to be a real threat because you never knew what they would do.

Where I used to live, you could get cited for parking in such away to block trash & recycling pickup. Downtown there were actual signs that said something like "Refuse loading zone. No Parking Wednesday 6am-noon this block" The ticket was a form of parking ticket and wasn't too much. And so long as the trash could still be picked up it was only a ticket but otherwise you would get towed. It also applied to the rest of town...even though there usually weren't signs. People just had to be able to place there trash out such that the trash truck could pick it up.

I don't know about the law here...but in the little cul-de-sac I live on it could be a problem. There is so little curb space.

I'm definitely a 'him' Crid, although I'm not so sure about the gentleman part...

And yes, cops having the time and latitude to exercise a little common sense, let's keep this out of the courts policing is a good thing.

I like how this place handled a bad, over the top review: http://imgur.com/MaEXF

Insufficient Poison I loved that pic!

Small business owners that are under-prepared for their many roles make these kinds of mistakes. Because a Small business owner wears all of the hats, they are so much more involved and need so much more training and preparation than say, a person managing a huge compny, who has a large staff of specialists that they can delegate to and trust.

I once had a martial arts teacher of my daughters try to raise the monthly fee for her lessons, even tho I had signed a yearly contract for a set amount. I spoke to my lawyer to make sure I understood things correctly, walked in to her next lesson, and asked to speak to him privately. I told him that I wasn't going to pay the higher amount, that if he chose to push the matter I would go into the next room and tell all of the other parents what my lawyer had told me, or he could let me out of my contract and never see me again.

The look on his face was priceless.

"We know that you stole the class and we can pursue legal action against you for that and that is why it is ridiculous that you complain about a price when you never paid for the class. You were never given a discount code... and somehow you used that to enter the studio."

A few things spring to mind
1. How do you 'steal' a class?
2. How do they know?
3. Who the fuck is going to hire a lawyer at hunnderes of dollars and hour and play court costs to file the complaint to recoup $25?
4. If there was no coupon code given they why did the gym accept it?