Fri 16 Apr 2010
Shoo Polish?
Posted by anaglyph under Idiots, Skeptical Thinking, Stupidity, WooWoo
[19] Comments
Tetherd Cow Ahead celebrates World Homeopathy Awareness Week!
Well Acowlytes, I bet you didn’t think I could do it. I bet you didn’t think I could tie our old friends from ShooTag into homeopathy awareness week! But we have a saying around these parts: ‘Any man is liable to err but only a fool persists in error’. ((Cicero)) And with that thought in mind, a search on ‘Energetic Solutions’ (the company behind ShooTag) and ‘homeopathy’ throws up this link. ((Which shows us also that pet owners aren’t the only stupid people that these swindlers have gulled))
Yes folks, the people who brought you ShooTag, started out by attempting to foist on the world ‘homeopathic creams for stress reduction’. Strangely, this comes as no surprise to me.
Nothing seems to have come of this previous enterprise though – I can’t find a single other thing about it. One has to assume that they weren’t quite in the league of all the other con-artists out there. It does add one further arrow to my quiver though – the ShooTaggers are even more obviously in it for the money. They’ve found the rich seam that is gullible New Age woowoo and they’re mining it for all they’re worth.
On a slightly more disturbing note, I draw your attention to a comment on this post on a blog called The Dish. Melissa Rogers, CEO of ShooTag claims to be sending the tags to Africa, a country that has a crippling malaria problem:
We have sent our People -Mosquito tags to Africa and Haiti. We have Africa interested in purchasing our tags.
I’m pretty sure that this is nothing more than grandiose bragging on Ms Rogers’ part ((it’s proving to be a habit of hers)) (‘sending the tags to Africa’ and ‘having Africa interested in purchasing our tags’ means fuck all in any real sense), but if the ShooTag crowd are venturing into a territory that sees them offering protection against malaria, Dengue fever, Ross river virus, Yellow fever, West Nile virus and the host of other mosquito-borne diseases that kill over a million people every year, then they better have something more convincing than the claptrap they’ve trotted out so far. While they’re currently hoodwinking gullible pet owners they’re relatively inconsequential – if they cross the line into allowing people to die through their misleading claims, they will have more than my annoyance to deal with.
19 Responses to “ Shoo Polish? ”
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Kudos to whoever linked you to the Austin Business Journal’s article about Energetic Solutions in the first place. A true hero, that guy.
Nah – he’s some serial blog commenter pest. I’ve been trying to get rid of him for years.
But he’s the only one who buys your music on iTunes.
So he claims.
Where do I send my money?
Looks like you were wrong Atlas (although I think we may have to use the term ‘read’ in its loosest possible sense).
Perhaps someone read him my comment and he just wants to buy some of your music, too.
I’d like to propose a challenge to Melissa Rogers et al.
Since it now appears ShooTag is claimed to be efficacious with mosquitos as well as fleas, let her and some volunteers sit in a mosquito infested ‘test chamber’ (preferably with insects containing a real virus) and see whether they get bitten…
The King
Yeah, now see, the problem is that ShooTag is (by their own admission) only about 75% effective.
Except of course under circumstances where it doesn’t work at all. Which could be “fault lines, cell phone towers and large doses of pesticides” to name a few possible challenges! Fault lines? Cell phone towers? Shit – is there anywhere that doesn’t have those things?
To translate: ShooTag works really well except in places where it doesn’t work for reasons that the ShooTag people choose. Hmm. Now why does that sound like complete bullshit?
Now why does that sound like complete bullshit?
Because it is.
Good Day, Mate! Greetings from your neighbor out in the bush. I have read the endless put-downs and verbal diarrhea you have so relentlessly put into this crusade against the shoo!tag product. It must be very, very threatening to you, for you to spend countless time and energy into trying to disclaim them. It makes people more and more interested in the product, since you seem to be so obsessed with it. I can only assume you are either:
1. A competitor in the industry of pest repellant’s.
2. Actually paid by shoo!tag to keep the controversy and interest in the product at a fever pitch.
Your undying attention and allegiance to this cause is kind of creepy, otherwise.
Anyway, because of all the attention, controversy and spotlight you have put on this product, I have just ordered the tags for myself, my horses and my dogs and will try them myself in the outback. The tags are being sold all over Australia, I have discovered…and in 5 other countries. I did my own investigating of the company, read a report where a major Venture Capitalist group has just invested several $100,000.00 in the company. Being a businessman, in the field of marketing, that does not speak to me as failure, or hoax, or voodoo. In closing, speaking to you from the heart – as a fellow Aussie, please do not makes all us blokes out to be so cruel, ignorant and close-minded. And since you obviously know so much about how this product does not work, please tell me exactly which tag you tested for yourself?
Apparently you have never had reason to use the tags, since you obviously never leave your spot in front of your computer monitor. Our country is vast and beautiful. Take a hike and clear your head and discover the beauty of actually LIVING your life, instead of trying to demean other’s.
Let’s see if you can dare to bring yourself to publish this on your relentless “Ode to Yourself”.
Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree – or does he?
Good Day Mate sounds like you went to the Indian call centre training workshop my friend. G’Day or Gidday might have been more like it perhaps…
‘neighbor’ is an interesting spelling – not around here though.
I happen to know that the Rev did purchase a tag – for his own creepy research reasons, more to follow on that I’m sure.
Aussies are sceptical, that’s not cruelty, that’s our culture, and thankfully it helps protect us from American scammers who are ten a penny.
As for legitimising a product based on investment in that product, err, that’s ludicrous. For eg the CIA spent over a million dollars on ‘operation kitty’, and how many people bought into hedge funds?
I hope you and your dogs are happy in the ‘outback’ as you so quaintly put it – perhaps you mean ‘the bush’.
Well, I have to go ‘walkabout’ now dear Kookaburra
Toodle Pip
The King
Ah, King Willy, you pre-empted me there. Of course I could see straight away that ‘Kookaburra’ wasn’t an Australian. He/she is hiding behind an AOL account address and thus the comment has an IP in the US like all AOL accounts, but this in itself is not necessarily an indicator of location. Culturally, though, ‘Kookaburra’ is quite clueless as you have pointed out. Aside from the lame ‘Good Day Mate’ (too much Crocodile Dundee, methinks) and ‘neighbor’, we also have ‘diarrhea’. It is to laugh. But hardly unsurprising – another demonstration of the witless modus operandi of these people.
I have to go out for a bit, (on my yearly sojourn away from ‘my spot in front of the computer monitor that I never leave’) but I will address Kookaburra’s vapid criticisms when I get back this afternoon. Maybe in a post of its own! I do love it when the chowderheads come to play!
Go for it Rev, I hear roasted Kookaburra tastes a lot like chicken!
The King
And what about our animal friends who don’t even get the the fucking placebo benefit when medical crackpottery is foisted on them.
http://theworstofperth.com/2007/12/16/placebo-domingo/
Kookaburra has quite a problem with apostrophes too doesn’t he mate?
King Willy: I’m pretty convinced that ‘Kookaburra’ is another kind of bird…
TWoP: Oh yes. I’d love to hear what our animal friends have to say about the efficacy of ShooTag. Where’s Dr Doolittle when you need him…?
Nurse Myra: Yes indeed. And spelling. And grammar. And sentence construction. As we shall see.
If Kookaburra happens to be reading, see my reply to your comment here.