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Help Me Pitch Ricochet
Many of us are quick to tell friends about a great book, movie, or restaurant we’ve discovered. So it is with Ricochet. I want others of the center-right persuasion to experience the awesomeness of this site. So, I’ve made the sales pitch for Ricochet to five people in my area and either gave them a Ricochet business card, or followed up with an e-mail with a link to Ricochet. To the best of my knowledge, none of them have even looked at the site (to their loss).
I may have convinced a cousin to sign up for The Daily Shot. I’ve got one friend who I thought would love Ricochet, so I bought him a one-year membership. Unfortunately, this was just before the conversion to Ricochet 2.0 and Max’s hiring, so the site wasn’t working properly. I couldn’t even get him to come to the Fargo Ricochet Meetup, and he lives closer than every member (except me) who did come. I always tell people about the free content — Main Feed, The Daily Shot, the podcasts — hoping that they will check out that stuff and eventually decide to join, but I don’t think anybody even looks at the site.
I am obviously a terrible salesman for Ricochet. So I want to hear from those of you who have talked somebody into joining. How did you do it?
[Editors’ Note: Do you know someone who craves intelligent, civil conversation with fellow members of the center-right? Ricochet is the place for it. As Randy mentioned, you can give a Coolidge-Level membership as a gift to whomever you choose. And yes, Randy will get credit for the assist.]
Published in General
The timing of this thread is serendipitous, since I finally got a friend to join this week after years of suggesting it to him. Not only that, he decided to go for the Thatcher membership! His pen name is RockingtheRed.
This is somewhat part of the problem. I saw your post, but I think I would have a hard time explaining to my friends and family that I am driving 5 1/2 hours to hang out with a bunch of internet conservative nerds. Even though my family is conservative, I don’t want to admit how much time I spend on this little site.
Ricochet is like an internet porn addiction, relatively harmless as long as it doesn’t migrate into one’s real life.
Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, Z. Maybe it’s time to be out and proud.
I ain’t never persuaded anyone to join, but I can think of a few characters ’round Here Whose presence actually dissuade others from joining.
I have tried, even to the point of offering to buy memberships for some of the folks who work at my clients. But…
They are all very smart blue collar folks who felt the people on the main feed were snobs who speak without any real experience and feel superior to them without any evidence it is true. Unfortunately this was when the #NeverEver was picking up steam.
So, no. I will not recommend it to anyone I know. If they would love the site, the last thing Ricochet needs is another #NeverEver. We seem to have quite a surplus in the herd right now.
Not read any Dave Carter, I guess.
Not posting that day. Having their sanity questioned for their choice of candidate in more than one post kind of did it.
Back at the very beginning of the Trump candidacy, I said that insulting half your base isn’t a good way to win elections. I guess it’s not a good way to attract subscribers, either.
I do question the sanity, or at least the common sense, of anyone who says that Trump was their first choice, although there aren’t many of those on Ricochet. I do not question or condemn anyone who says that Trump was not their guy, but he is the lesser of two evils as compared to Hillary, and therefore they will vote for him. I believe you have said that is your position. That’s fine. That is an honorable position.
What I am sick of is being told that I, as a #nevertrump, need to shut up and get with the program. I am sick of being told that if I vote my conscience, or if I put country ahead of party, then I am a sanctimonious traitor.
It is remarkable to me that you can play the martyr here. Not only has your side picked up support from the majority of the Party, who are reluctantly supporting Trump, but it is your side that is doing all the name-calling and arm-twisting. Why don’t you just accept that there are some people who disagree with you?
I haven’t noticed a lot of name calling by the people who are reluctantly supporting Trump. I count myself among them. I do remember a lot of name calling in the early days when Trump first declared. And it wasn’t by Trump supporters.
Just as a quick example, Michael Stopa wrote a post declaring:
Please compare that to what I said:
Can you really tell me I am wrong? My answer to Michael not giving a damn is that I don’t give a damn whether he gives a damn. If and when the Ricochet powers that be decide that “keep it to yourself” is an example of smart and civil conversation, I’ll have something to think about. But not now.
I do have a good friend who I think could benefit and benefit from Ricochet. I was going to give him a membership, but frankly the relationship would suffer terribly if I did so during this particular election.
So bloody much acrimony.
This just worked again.
It’s that Rhody charisma, I guess. People just want to follow you even if you’re not trying to lead them.
Next step: Try to get him to post!
I’ve persuaded a couple of friends, but I guess you’d not be surprised people who might put up with my political talk would sign up for Ricochet. It’s harder to get them to comment or write, mostly because of the acrimony.
At a meetup, ‘ persuaded someone to write: He’s been a member longer than I have been, but quietly; so I think that’s a quicker avenue of success.–This is yet another thing I learned from veterans such as the good folks who organize the group writing projects, who are forever trying, & with some success, to persuade people who’ve not yet written a post or who do not write much to get writing.
But if it comes to new members, I’m not sure what’s going to attract them except political talk. That offers its punishments & rewards soon & fully. Every other aspect of Ricochet is submerged. It’s esoteric knowledge, so to speak, the unacknowledged property of various informal groups. Even at the level of the main feed–it’s politics or bust, so it’s hard to attract people.
I wonder whether Ricochet could really offer an alternative to the conservative websites like Acculturated or Federalist or others where there’s far more talk about the culture–dunno if our members would care for more talk-about-the-culture.
Maybe recommending podcasts to people who would not mind throwing money on a yearly subscription might work…
That is a good point. Maybe when the whole site is reprogrammed for Ricochet 3.0, they should have a way for non-members to see a preview of the Member Feed. Like just show the first paragraph of the articles on page 1, leaving out the ones that the author has marked as non-promotable to the Main Feed.
Great idea! I’d change it up somewhat: Have a sneak preview–again, limited–of either the most popular threads or of random threads. (Of course, respecting the provision for privacy you made.)
Frankly, the only good thing I see coming with the creation of groups in Ricochet 3.0 is giving some space & some protection for talk about other things than politics.
My opinion of the Main Feed is plainly that I do not go there. I’ve heard other members who write a lot say the same. Something like that is true of the Member Feed when it gets to too much political fighting.
Groups might improve the alerts plus following system. My alert system let’s me know the stuff I’m interested in because I participate there & makes me ask myself if I want to keep paying attention; but it cannot tell me about new things I might like except when I follow members. That’s not nothing, of course, & groups only add some improvement to this combo of alerts & following–there’s no radical transformation. But skipping the feed saves me some grief…
Oh yeah, Groups. Although non-members shouldn’t be able to look inside the Groups, it might be good if they can see the directory of groups so they can see what else goes on besides politics. If there are groups for Cooking, Science Fiction, Firearms, Hard Liquor, and others, just seeing the titles and descriptions would tip people off that Ricochet is more than just politics.
Miss Berlinski also floated the suggestion at some point of adding a university feature to Ricochet. It’s a community, might as well have a college. That might also attract people…
That’s … odd, because we’ve also been getting complaints from other folks who don’t understand why we’re promoting so much Trump-friendly material and who are busy accusing Peter of being a sell-out because he’s not #NeverTrump.
Oh well.
Note:
Done. My bad. -- TomMr. Meyer, do correct that quote there.
I think you got a couple quotes mixed up, Tom. That quote was from Hank Rhody, not Carey J. And Hank’s quote was just commenting on the cheapness of his associates, not necessarily Trump-related.
Yeah, I think it can be a hard sell to convince people to pay for a website when they’re so used to accessing sites for free. There have been a lot of times that I’ve wanted to comment on a site, but don’t because I would have to create an account and I don’t feel like doing that. Honestly, when I joined Ricochet, I thought it would be a waste of money and I would never use it.
Well, there are two obvious ways around this: Personal friendship or something like fame. Podcasts have a startling way of combining these things, which is very America, I daresay: Famous people–who else has a claim on others’ attention & time?–talking in an informal, even familiar manner…
Getting people to the web site in the first place is a good start, though. Even if they are non-subscribers, getting The Daily Shot and listening to podcasts will eventually persuade a fraction of those people to join. And I assume the more people who are listening to the podcasts, the more Ricochet can charge for advertising, which at least helps keep the lights on.
But you’re right, there’s a planet full of free content out there, so it’s hard to get people to buy the proverbial cow when they can get the milk for free. Poor fools just don’t know how awesome this cow is.
See, for me TDS and the podcasts wouldn’t have drawn me in, and then y’all would never have had the pleasure of having me on the site. ? It was the conversation on more of the cultural posts that got me. I’m not super up to date on politics the way others are, and I don’t comment that often on political posts because I don’t have anything insightful to say. But the interpersonal interaction is what hooked me. I wonder if this same dynamic isn’t at play for other people my age.
Yes & yes!
Kinda-sorta. I thought the idea of Ricochet sounded good, but I didn’t feel like I had anything useful to add. Still don’t for that matter. But I do stick around because I went to a couple meetups and while they aren’t member-exclusive I find it’s better to go as a member. So much more inside baseball that you don’t get as a non-member.
I brought Captain Power here. You’ll occasionally see him comment. Persuaded is too strong a word. We were at Yellowstone with a mutual friend in 2012. He had some political podcasts, and I told him about the site.