It worked. I’d expect more of this stuff.

It’s unusual, you noticed. In the dot.com days you would see stuff like this for new product launches. I remember PR people sending fake hand grenades, “the product is explosive!”
chocolate shaped stuff and reversed product press releases. “don’t go backwards with your security!”

The brilliant move here is it looks like an accident. This allows people to “fix” the problem. Of course this is what I would tell the client if he called to complain. “Did Scalzi blog about it? Did Charlie Stross trouble shoot it? Did the core IT/SF audience spend time in “Mr Fix-it” mode? Yes,Yes,and yes. And they will be reminded of how great Silverburg is as a writer. If I has sent out a standard release the audience could engage their superior feelings about grammer, printer drivers, PDF’s and the correct spelling of famous SF writers.”

The problem withthis strategy is that instead of people understanding your brilliance they think you just messed up. You should really tell the client first. “This will look like an error, but it will engage the audiences’ puzzle solving skills and pull them into the story. But don’t tell them I did it on purpose. Just pretend I’m the dumbest person in the room and could the stories and watch the sales re in because of the “stupid” PR person.”

Acting stupid is hard to do for people with big egos but if it works for you, use it.

“I…prepared…Explosive Runes…this…mor…”

(white flash)

Epic fail is how the kids put it, I believe.

I don’t think I’ll try to parse any more of it. But I’m sure that Dave has identified the cause.

Potential vendors call back confused, asking why their signup form was gibberish.

It’s somewhat of a relief to see it plagues others as well.

ok, enough IT bloviation.