Freemium worship
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Mouseover title: "Somehow it became God week on SMBC".
(Referencing these previous strips.)
The AfterComic:
More and more internet content is either totally or partially pay-walled — SMBC is still free, so consider their Patreon or their merch…
Philip Taylor said,
August 29, 2024 @ 10:13 am
I am fully aware that my reaction is both atypical and irrational, but I cannot help but note that of all the modern foreshortenings ("television" -> " tele", "telecommunications" -> "telecom", "pilot project" -> "pilot", "technology" -> "tech", etc.), the one that most causes me to want to vomit is "merchandise" -> "merch".
Philip Anderson said,
August 29, 2024 @ 11:24 am
@Philip Taylor
I hadn’t come across ‘merch’ as an abbreviation before; to me it’s just the Welsh word for daughter or girl (Breton merc’h only means daughter). So offering merch is open to misinterpretation.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
August 29, 2024 @ 1:45 pm
Anecdotal evidence from W.Pa.: "Merch" had been used among stagehands and roadies to describe "stuff with the band's name on it sold at concert venues" since I started out as an I.A.T.S.E. Local 3 stagehand in 1997. This is to be distinguished from "s(h)wag", which is usually referring to the t-shirts given to the stagehands who work the load-out.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
August 29, 2024 @ 1:58 pm
(Supporting authority for prior post): https://www.backstageculture.com/roadie-dictionary-a-list-of-touring-terms/
J.W. Brewer said,
August 29, 2024 @ 2:34 pm
A mid-late Nineties origin for the sense of "merch" Benjamin Orsatti references at least loosely fits my own memories, where maybe I'm more focused on the sense that IIRC the term had not yet arisen in the Eighties. It seems like a key factor might be when it became common for touring bands to sell anything beyond just t-shirts, because that's what would have motivated the need for a word meaning the whole category of "t-shirts and other stuff with the band's name on it sold in the same context as the t-shirts." Maybe your more high-end arena-type shows in the Eighties had posters available for purchase as well as t-shirts? But maybe that wasn't quite enough (or wasn't common enough at the less economically exalted strata of the touring-band economy) to create a felt need for a lexeme? Indeed, at the low end of the economic ladder you could not circa '84 rely on "underground" indie-label bands playing small clubs to even be traveling with an inventory of t-shirts for sale. Maybe the minimum number of shirts you needed to order to get a good wholesale price went down over time as the technology to do customized small runs got better/cheaper?
For an online-content producer like SMBC to have a potentially merch-buying fanbase the way a rock band would seems likely to be a more recent development than the Nineties.
Kenny Easwaran said,
August 29, 2024 @ 2:54 pm
I was just wondering about the origin of the word "swag" a few days ago, which is a term that I and my partner independently learned at different academic conferences, as a term for the branded free stuff that is given out to conference attendees. (Usually a tote bag, sometimes a mug or a stress toy, often a USB drive, and occasionally a more distinctive item like a hat, or at one conference I was at recently, a conference branded umbrella! I don't think the hard copy of the program, or the lanyard for holding the nametag count as "swag".)
This thread prompted me to look it up: https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/history-of-swag
Mark Liberman said,
August 29, 2024 @ 3:06 pm
@J.W. Brewer: "A mid-late Nineties origin for the sense of "merch" Benjamin Orsatti references at least loosely fits my own memories, where maybe I'm more focused on the sense that IIRC the term had not yet arisen in the Eighties."
The OED has citations back to 1957, FWIW, though the first persuasive one is from 1969:
Each of the three stories..was produced for a one hour program slot. Ten minutes of each hour were used by the sponsor ‘to move the merch’, as they say.
[J. M. Culkin in T. Capote et al., Trilogy 13]
And Don DeLillo's Americana, originally published in 1971, has
"What makes a good advertising man?"
"He knows how to move the merch off the shelves. It's as simple as that".
The earliest example that I've found in the NYT is from a story in 1989:
"Behind every major fashion move, there is a desire to "move the merch,' as they say. Mr. Bohan established Dior as the No. 1 maker of couture, or made-to-order, clothing in the world, but his ready-to-wear designs never caught on."
J.W. Brewer said,
August 29, 2024 @ 3:23 pm
@Mark Liberman: It's not surprising that "merch" as a clipping of "merchandise" was extant in various trade-jargon contexts earlier, but "merch" in the sense that seemed to be under discussion here, i.e. prototypically the stuff you can buy at the "merch table" at a live performance by (some genres of) musicians, and then sold-over-the-internet versions of the same sort of stuff, has a referent narrower than "merchandise" which I don't think is the case in your NYT quote.
I suppose sometimes the exact same physical item could be both "merch" and "swag," if it were sold in one context and given away free in another, but much swag (such as a conference-branded umbrella …) is the sort of stuff it's difficult to imagine someone being willing to buy.
J.W. Brewer said,
August 29, 2024 @ 3:30 pm
Come to think of it, an interesting edge case is the sort of t-shirt or tote bag or coffee mug sporting the logo and/or call letters of your local PBS or NPR station is which is neither given away free nor "sold" on a freestanding basis but is given as a thank-you premium to financial supporters who donate at least $X, where that's a price above the typical freestanding price for a comparable item. Are these "merch" or "swag" or some sort of hybrid?
Seth said,
August 29, 2024 @ 4:13 pm
@ J.W. Brewer – They are "swag". The distinction, as I see it, is that "merch" is stuff that you want to buy, while "swag" is stuff you don't want to buy but rather the organization want to give you for brand promotion. The latter doesn't prevent you from liking it, but difference is who initiates the transaction. Very few people start out thinking "I want an NPR tote bag", at least before it became iconic in certain circles.
JPL said,
August 29, 2024 @ 6:07 pm
Merch is for the fans; swag is for the subscribers (and conference registrants). Intrusive ads like in the cartoon are like the periodic beatings in a protection racket.
Peter Taylor said,
August 30, 2024 @ 4:47 am
Unless there's such a thing as synthetic cocoa, "100% natural cocoa" is an empty boast.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
August 30, 2024 @ 7:33 am
JPL said,
Hee hee. Now I'll never again be able to look at a pop-up ad without picturing some moustache pete brandishing a bastone, saying, "Time-a to take you medicine!"
Andreas Johansson said,
August 30, 2024 @ 7:34 am
The 1987 movie Spaceballs points out that it's not itself that makes the real money but the "merch", so the meaning "branded stuff for sale" was presumably well-established by then.
J.W. Brewer said,
August 30, 2024 @ 9:13 am
This 2022 piece combines the classic punk-rock-band-with-merch-table theme with intrusive product-placement plugs. https://thehardtimes.net/culture/band-takes-break-in-middle-of-set-to-plug-sponsors-blue-apron-and-ziprecruiter/
Philip Taylor said,
August 30, 2024 @ 11:42 am
Peter — maybe not "synthetic cocoa" per se, but might well be a possible ingredient for non-Oreo cookies — United States Patent 3,012,890 SYNTHETIC COCOA BUTTER SUBSTITUTE
Brett said,
August 30, 2024 @ 12:04 pm
@Andreas Johansson: Yogurt never uses the term "merch," although he talks a lot about "merchandising."
J.W. Brewer said,
August 30, 2024 @ 12:07 pm
@Andreas Johansson: Do you have a youtube clip or equivalent of the Spaceballs usage you're referencing? I ask because I was curious and found online what purports to be the complete script (although I can't be certain it's 100% accurate), and it has a scene similar to what you describe that doesn't actually use the clipped form "merch." On p. 72 of this https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/spaceballs-1987.pdf the character YOGURT asks:
"Why are we all here? In a word: Merchandising!"
Then after YOGURT gets baffled responses from his interlocutors, there's the further explanation:
"The movie's nothing anymore. The real money's in the record albums, the video cassettes, lunch boxes, sheets, towels, toilet paper, and the ultimate humiliation … action figures!!!"
So if this online script is accurate, the scene is interesting precisely because it's describing what's recognizably the "merch" concept without directly using the word. This is from the POV of the movie biz rather than music biz, but maybe helps provide a conceptual framework for "merch" from the seller side rather than buyer side as "stuff that provides ancillary revenue streams distinct from the traditional/primary revenue stream." Which in the movie biz would be ticket sales in cinemas plus maybe fees paid by television networks/stations to subsequently show the film, and in the music biz would primarily be revenue from record sales plus ticket sales for live performances.
Viseguy said,
August 30, 2024 @ 12:50 pm
When I was 17 I was circumcised for medical reasons and spent a week in the hospital recovering. The nurses and hospital staff referred to me — not the procedure I had, but me, the person — as "the circ". No doubt this sort of truncation is common in occupational jargon of all kinds, but it felt kind of odd to be at the receiving end of it.
Michael Vnuk said,
August 30, 2024 @ 5:06 pm
Another extension (from a 'New Republic' article, 30 August): 'Brian Pannebecker, swagged out in an Auto Workers for Trump t-shirt and visor, was called on stage at one point to criticize electric vehicle mandates.'