Wondering if I'm just a jack wagon or what.

[Kenhorne21]

I am a fairly active Twitter guy and have noticed lately that some people that claim to be reviewers and cigar "bloggers" seem to just spew crap out there and people take it as gospel. Is it wrong that I want to blast these said "experts" or what. I usually lay back and bite my tongue. And by no means am I a cigar expert but try to learn as much as possible and look up questions I have before accepting it as truth. Well I guess that's the end of my rant but was curious if anyone else sees this or am I just a jack wagon? Thoughts ??


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[Kip]

If you're a jackwagon, you're the same kind as me. I've had a bug up my backside over this for a while...I don't think anyone who puts a review out there has any special powers (I certainly include myself in that). I still maintain that the trick is to find a review-writer whose personal preferences line up with your own...and use them as a guideline. Not gospel. If you follow a person's writing for a while, you can begin to find similarities and differences between him/her and yourself which you can use to guide what you might want to smoke as a trial. I even wrote an article about this very topic las year (and used "jackwagon"....as well as "premature self-immaculation," which I'm quite proud of).

CLICK HERE

[Stewmuse]

Kip... surely you don't feel limited to just being THAT kind of jack wagon...

[Kip]

I'm a jack(wagon) of all trades...

[Kenhorne21]

I actually stole the word from you. Lol. There are some good guys out there but some others I get the feeling do it to get free sticks for themselves. And this I will not be convinced otherwise.


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[Kenhorne21]

Actually I think your use of Jack wagon may rival Yepp these days and believe it or not bad boy as well.


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[Kip]

I get my share of free cigars, but 1.)it's always disclosed in the review (which, by the way, is required by FTC regulation for all websites who receive free goods for review) and 2.)the market value of cigars I receive is a small fraction (10-15%) of the costs of keeping a site up/running/growing - not even including the sheer volume of time required to fix the issues that creep up. Granted, I cause many of the issues but I'll ignore that fact . Keeping up a site is still a cost center, especially in our case since we have so far refused all offers of direct advertising.

I totally agree, however, that many of the folks under the cigar media banner at least have the appearance of being glorified marketing arms of some manufacturers. I'm trying not to sound overly Holier-Than-Thou toward some other sites, but yeah that at least looks to be the case at times. The thing is, most become transparent in a hurry. They're not too hard to spot after a while.

[Kip]

By the way, here are the regs for disclosure and a guidance document if you're into bone-dry government bureaucracy:

CLICK HERE for regs

CLICK HERE for further guidance

[Zedman05]

This is the internet, and therefore; screw the government as their laws apply to your country, not everyone elses that looks here. If you don't have advertising per se, then you are not beholden to anything other than your own ethics.

Cigar F^iend

[Kip]

This is the internet, and therefore; screw the government as their laws apply to your country, not everyone elses that looks here.

These laws apply to me, regardless of who's looking. Just because I have a foreign audience doesn't mean I can disregard the law that governs me as a US citizen....especially since the website is hosted inside the US. It may be available around the world, but it originates and is registered in the US.

In any event, ethics trump this anyway. I'd still disclose where any samples come from....