When I Used to Think it Was Okay to Use John Chow’s Likeness
Sep 30th, 2007 by admin
Have you ever done anything really stupid, but not realize it until someone says something to you. That is definitely the case with my recent encounter with the blogging mogul John Chow. What happened was, one day I decided to change the MyBlogLog avatar for The Prize Blog. I remember thinking to myself, maybe instead of a picture of myself I will put up a picture of John Chow. This choice was after I decided against using a picture of the cheerleader from Heroes. Fast forward two weeks later:
“Thanks to Aaron Cook for the head ups on this one. It seems The Prize Blog is using my avatar for their MyBlogLog profile. I never gave them permission to use my image and I think it’s a pretty low and dirty thing to do. They go around from blog to blog leaving my image in the blog’s MyBlogList list and the blogger thinks I visited their blog. Only when they click on the image do they realized that it was The Prize Blog and not John Chow dot Com. I will give The Prize Blog 72 hours to remove the image. Their chance of ever being mention in this blog in the future is zero.”
- John Chow
If you notice, he did not link back to my site - so obviously he was pissed! Instantly I felt like a jerk. Not because he caught me, but because I had never even considered the people (bloggers) it would effect. It never registered in my mind that it was sort of unscrupulous. The last thing any blogger wants to do is ruin their reputation. So immediately I went and changed my MyBlogLog avatar, of course. Too bad it takes 48 hours to change. Then I wrote a comment on the post and also emailed a paraphrased version of that to John Chow himself. Here is what I said about the situation:
“Hey, I wanted to apologize to anybody who was “deceived.” My intention really was not to impersonate John Chow, but I can easily see how that’s how it looks. I did it randomly and I just want to say how sorry I am, not just to John, but all the bloggers who were insulted by that pretty dumb thing I did. Hope you can understand, thanks.”
- Brian Aldrich
After posting this comment I was not sure if bloggers would understand how sorry I was and am for such a ludicris marketing blooper. Feeling embarrassed naturally I had to blog about it! The good news is though everyone, there is a comment on the post from the real John Chow saying,
“All is forgiven.”
- John Chow
Pretty merciful for a mogul to understand the mistake I made. I want to just thank John for that and also thank all the bloggers who commented on the post, all of your reactions were honest and justified. That was my adventure on the brink of destroying my blogging reputation. Bloggers remember to think twice before trying something new online.
I thought of impersonating someone famous for once and luckily I didn’t. Phew… The consequences is serious…
Hey, we all make mistakes man. I know I do! At least you showed class by openly admitting it was a mistake and by openly apologizing for it. I think that definitely says a lot about your character.
Shine on,
Aaron
I believe you. Sometimes we do things just for fun and never think twice. But there is a wise saying “Perception lies in the eyes of the perceiver”. Most of the bloggers strive hard to get more reputation, your act was unavoidably interpreted as a kind of ripping off.
If everyone were successful already, they would have a lighted heart and smile when you did that, they would have treated it as a kind of funny joke, no big deal.
“all is forgiven”…classic
[...] MyBlogLog profile because it was using his avatar for some reason. Brian explains and confesses in his other blog (Blog Duck) that… it was really [...]
Well done on putting your hand up and admitting your mistake.
The hardest thing for anyone to do is to say “I’m sorry”. This took a lot of guts and even though you may have done something like this, if you post are good, readers will stick around. If something like this happened to me, I would be just as mad as John Chow was but kind of complimented at the same time. Lesson learned.
man i was pissed when i kept seeing JohnChows avatar on my site…
No seriously, i’m just kidding… I thought it was pretty funny… Yah! for taking action on your ideas in the moment.
Look at John Cow…
a lesson well learned
Dude, John Chow can be a bully sometimes and you should have just ignored him. John and his gang have to tried to bring down me on many an occasion but I just ignore him and continue doing what im good at.