T-Shirt Hell closing - Read the Owner's Statement

[MillyMc]

Guess Im the odd man out, but I thought the examples mentioned werent really funny and were anti-social. Like those crappy ironic shirts that Kohls makes. Not quite cool and too much "trying to be different".

i prefer me some busted tees and snorg tees actually. Picked up a couple from there over the holidays.

[Boon]

Too bad. I've been on their mailing list for years, but never had the balls to buy a shirt.

[troup]

The slogans are quite funny and everything but I dont think I would ever wear one in public. It is a very easy business though, being offensive doesn't take much effort at all. I like his email but even if he makes as much as he says there will be a lot of investors who dont want to be connected with such a fucked up site. I imagine a lot of customers are getting as tired of the same old offensive stuff as he is and thats why he is dropping it. Hope his employees appreciate him just ditching it like this after they have had to deal with threatening customers their entire career.

[MillyMc]

^^^ what he said. whats the point in trying to offend everyone with your tshirt. and then complaining that people are offended?

This is a rant from one of the T-shirt Hell's employees and it is the best thing i have read in ages. It's long but there are some great quotables passages in there.

It parallel's the problems Jesus has with people that complain about the main site. After all, this site is just entertainment.... get over it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Rant From A Soon To Be Laid Off T-shirt Hell Employee

(In response to a select group of assholes and their self righteous reaction to us going out of business)

I would like to say something to all the idiots who think we've poisoned society. And I'm not talking about the religious nuts or the militant [whining minority here]. I'm talking about this new wave of douches comprised primarily of twenty- and thirty- something white people who feel like they have to defend the little guy, despite the fact that in 2009 the little guy no longer exists, and if he does he isn't even aware there's a fight going on.

The obvious response to these people would be to say they have no sense of humor, basically because it's the truth. But too many people think sense of humor means what you do and don't laugh at. If you look up the definition that may be what it is. But to me sense of humor means you don't take things so seriously. It doesn't mean you laugh at what's funny and don't laugh at what isn't. It means you don't get pissed about what is clearly a joke.

All these damn hip people pretend to love satire as long as said satire is in agreement with views they already hold. "Yay! They're subtly pointing out problems with government and corporations. That is brilliant satire." But if someone delivers a bit of satire that attacks instead of defends their beliefs, well that's just pandering and juvenile.

If I write something pointing out the positives of corporations, (and they do have a LOT of positives) it would be dismissed immediately as the work of an immature douchebag. It wouldn't matter how logical and well-presented it was. Because it doesn't agree with their already held belief of "corporations bad" it would just be wrong.

It's all well and good to laugh at Stephen Colbert because he winks at the camera. "You see, it's okay that he made a racist joke because he gave me a sly smirk and let me know he was kidding." I like him and appreciate his work, but I say fuck that.

I will look you in the eye and use "******" as a punchline because anyone with a goddamn brain should know I'm kidding. I'm not going to be a pussy and end every sentence with "j/k" or allude to the fact that I'm the asshole in a scenario just because modern comedy has been neutered. I have no desire to cater to the techno-savvy, utterly useless generation currently drowning in irony.

"Irony" has come to define comedy for this group of cubicle-dwelling slackers who think the only valid form of comedy must be slathered in snarkiness and must point out that rich white people are assholes. Powerful insight, hipster. You're so goddamn busy being original you failed to notice you're about the least original thing left on the planet.

I'm also not going to censor myself just because a lot of people in this world are ignorant assholes who miss the point. There's no shortage of racists and/or wife-beaters in the world. You really think some retarded gag I thought of in a pot-fueled stupor is "empowering" these dicks? Rick from Meineke was going to hit Sheila tonight because he's a miserable sack of shit, not because we make a reference to a fat bitch on some strands of cotton. He's not going to look at T-Shirt Hell and go "The shirt makes a good point. Here comes the thunder, Sheila!"

A joke, on a shirt or otherwise, has never hurt anyone. You can call that an old argument and you'd be right, but the only reason that argument has gotten old is because you emotionally coddled cunts keep presenting it. The rest of us are content to just laugh at shit and keep to ourselves.

In fact, if a joke has ever gotten anyone hurt, it would be the person delivering the joke. As in, the guy wearing one of these "abhorrent" shirts might possibly get his ass kicked as a result. If that's the case, the guy you call the narrow-minded piece of trash is the one having harm inflicted upon him, and probably at the hands of the guy you felt needed defending in the first place.

I suppose it doesn't really matter what I say, because the people I'm talking about here will not give my side of the argument any regard. Kind of ironic, considering many of them present themselves as pillars of open-mindedness. They can use illogical thinking to make any argument they want. In this instance they chose to complain about T-shirts, but they could just as easily have written to General Mills and complained that the goddamn Cocoa Puffs bird reinforces stereotypes.

I'm talking about the kind of people who will no doubt find contradictions in this very article, because they don't listen to people they disagree with so they can learn from or hear the other side. They only listen to people they disagree with waiting for an opportunity to prove them wrong. The same kind of people who watch FOX News ironically.

I hate Bill O'Reilly as much as anyone who doesn't eat paste, but if and when I watch his show (when my remote and legs are broken) I will attempt to get his point of view. I'm not going to watch it just so I can roll my eyes and feel smarter than a windbag with millions of dollars. "O'Reilly is such a tool. I'm gonna go listen to the Decemberists now."

These dicks call us racist, sexist and homophobic at the drop of a hat, all in an effort to convince themselves and others they are enlightened, but the truth is that they are, at best, oversensitive, or, at worst, insincere tools who just want to make others feel bad for enjoying something.

To me at least, racism, sexism and all the other -isms are defined by actions, not by thoughts or jokes. If I put some joke on a shirt about hunting Jews with a crossbow, it's not the new Holocaust. It's a fucking joke. Maybe it's funny and maybe it's not, but beyond that it's nothing.

You think there are one million potential Nazis out there just waiting for one retarded pun to pull the whole thing together? "We have so much hate for Jews, but we're so disorganized. If we only had one funny shirt to get us really organiz- Well well well... What's this? A rabbi getting shoved in a meat grinder on a T-shirt? Let's go get 'em, boys!"

Forgive the analogy, but the twats who label you as uneducated or misogynistic because you had the audacity to chuckle at a retarded joke are basically the adult version of the emo kid who tries to make well-adjusted kids feel inferior because they play football instead of brooding. Fortunately emos and fags who complain about shirts have the internet to convene and strengthen each other's douchiness.

Aside from the people who deride us as a cancer on society, there are also the people who simply refer to us as immature and lowest common denominator. To those people I would just like to say: No fucking shit. You call what we do juvenile? The company that makes shirts about midgets and shaving your balls is childish? As long as you're tossing out these keen observations, why don't you point out that Fat Albert is fat and black and Albert? Hey, there's two guys 69ing each other with vibrators shoved in their asses. Could you tell me if they're gay? I just can't fucking tell.

Anyone who complains about any business is just deluding themselves that they're affecting or influencing a company's product or business practices. You're pathetic. You're not an agent of change. You're just another prick wasting your life, only you don't even have the good sense to do it with drugs, alcohol and anonymous sex. You choose to do it with your cuntish whining and morally superior brow beating.

You people are nothing more than your very own grandparents complaining about Elvis Presley's shaking hips. He was supposed to end society, but society went on. Then came your parents, and David Bowie and Martin Scorsese were supposed to ruin society. Society went on. Well now it's your turn, and what are you people complaining about? Cartoons and T-shirts.

You convince yourselves the type of entertainment we provide can undo social progress because you want to believe entertainment can provide social progress. The truth is it can't do either. Minorities gained rights because a bunch of politicians passed laws, not because Bob Dylan wrote some pretty songs.

Con't

But this is all just a lot of bluster once you realize I'm talking about fucking entertainment. You can take all the references to social commentary, satire and irony and shove them up your ass. This is all just something to be either enjoyed or glanced at and forgotten. We're not making the world a worse place and Jon Stewart isn't making the world a better place. We're all just a bunch of people saying stuff and either you like it or you don't.

Feel free to say we suck, but you don't need to quote civil rights leaders and hypothesize for ten paragraphs to justify your opinion of some fucking shirts. Just say "Fucking lame" and move on. When you go on a 500-word diatribe about the social relevance of our shirts you are doing two things.

1) Placing way too much importance on a bunch of shirts that, despite the handful of shirts people single out as "over the line," are essentially a lot of jokes about fucking and drinking.

And 2) You are discussing the importance of that shirt, thus validating the existence of that shirt as a source of social debate, indirectly giving merit to us keeping that shirt on the site.

So, again, to all you douches who want to do away with everything "poisoning" society, your best bet is to greet it with indifference. When you conjure up this phony passion in defense of the beleaguered and put upon, over a bunch of JOKES, you're just being the douche the rest of us enjoy laughing at.

Oh, you can tell yourself you're different than the crazy religious lady or the angry black lady because you're more educated or intellectual, but just like them, you are complaining about a bunch of shirts. But at least those aforementioned crazy people are sincere. You people, on the other hand, are so insincere you don't even qualify as the twats you strive to be.

But despite all of your faults, I'm glad you people are out there complaining. Because long after I've killed the creative part of my brain with drugs and alcohol and we stop producing funny shirts, at least our fans will always have you people to laugh at. Tirade over. Go eat a rotting snatch.

[Carlos Spicy Wiener]

Man fuck those dumb ass sensitive people, I have a shitload of shits from that place and it's funny, if you can't take the shit with a grain of salt then you need to fucking shoot yourself in the head because your a waste of space and your the same douches that files bullshit lawsuits and who have made are kids and our country full of whinney ass bitches. I have worn those shirts everywhere and got looks, but so what, people will look and give you dirty looks and won't do a fucking thing, oh they might make a comment but only with people around, if their by themselves they will just look, fucking pussies if you don;t like it say something and then deal with what you get back. The shirt are jokes and that's it, and the fucking homo's who are offended by it's not gay if you kick their ass afterwards need to just become straight again. I have a few gay friends who laughed their asses off at that shirt. there's are also the guys who like to mention that they prefer the bottom. I so fucking tired of people who are offended by the smallest things, I bought a shirt from there the other day with obama on the front and it says are we cool now, i got it because it's funny and not because people might think I'm a racists, fuck that if you can't express yourself then we really do live in a place that hasn't ever changed and never will, because people like that are still alive in this country.

[Bong O. Boi]

I'm mixed on this. On the one hand I'm constantly pimping "freedom of speech". I remember 10+ years ago, when gansta rap was becoming in vogue, and Ice T was coming out with "Cop Killer" and society as we knew it was coming to a screaching halt because of it. I was discussing it with the Algonquin Roundtrable group I was hanging with at the time over Sunday pizza buffet at Godfather's. One of my points was that in the "hood" women were "bitches and hos" and cops were hated long before Easy- E and Ice T came along. They were simply reporting what they saw in daily life, altho I have to question if there are a lot of driveby's in Snoop Doublizoggs gated community.

Here's the rub. 10+ years later, we have a much more abrasive society. Everyone decries the negativity of last years campaign, but the truth is that negativity obviously sells. Being ironic for the sake of being ironic, rap music, Limp Bizkit and Pantera, the cynical brand of standup humor, the WWE and UFC, the talking head political shows and the Colbert/ Stewart/ Maher comedy as news have all helped make us a more desensetized culture.

What can be done to reverse it? Probably nothing. Because at the end of the day, I don't want all entertainment to be G rated. I love to be offended and I love to offend. I don't want to live in a culture where we race to the streets to riot because a newspaper prints cartoons of whatever Savior there might be the way they do in the Third World. I love bawdy humor. I love nude scenes. I love porn. I love TShirt Hell's designs. I love when anyone says "shit" on South Park or the Shield. And I love to try to out- raunch my coworkers. None of that by itself ruins society, but I think the cumulative effect is fairly destructive.

I think when this sort of thing becomes ingrained in the culture, it's next to impossible to remove. Societies rise, societies fall.

I'm still a believer that if something offends you, change the fucking channel. Just the name should give you an idea of what TShirt Hell is about. If you're a delicate little flower, you'd best be looking elsewhere.

I've been tring to figure out how to slip this anecdote inro this posting, but I can't find any smooth way to do it, so here goes: A crony of mine, on this board and at work, posted an old pic of me on his MySpace page. It's a darling photo of my award winning Halloween costume. I was Britney Spears. The early Britney, if you know what I mean. Pigtails and schoolgirl- city, baby. So, like those commercials say, once it's on the net, it's everywhere. I don't care. To most of my coworkers I'm pretty much an anonymous, silent, Lurch- like, borderline retard character. It let them see me as I truly am in the real world: the clown who uses humor to try to cover up how truly miserable I am. The other day someone was kinda lightly teasing me about it, in front of people. I told him the thing that bothered him the worst about the pic was the way it made him feel deep in his belly when he looks at it. Laughter abounded. Owning someone for sport: Priceless.

Red

[MillyMc]

Good comment Red.

We are always changing, we just have to make sure it doesnt change too fast. The place Ive seen the biggest change has been in the sexualization of our culture and how it is trickling down to the young'ins.

In HS everybody could pick out the two "whores". Then my freshmen year of college, the girl I dated was talking about her middle school sister basically pullin tricks for other middle schoolers. There were upper middle class daddy's girls pulling this. On one hand, good for them, but on the other, where next?

[Bong O. Boi]

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It is a matter of changing. I became my dad when I turned 35. The music these kids are listeing to (while I was istening to Slayer and Dimmu Borger). And I've basically gotten worse. Or better. It depends on perspective. The sexualization of the culture and how it affects kids bothers me. Now, this is from a guy with countless VHS porn tapes, porn DVDs up the yingyang and gigs galore of some of the most oddball fuckvids that can be conjured up by fertile, yet efficient, German minds. Add 20 years of wife swapping and having my virginity stolen from me by a younger cousin and I think my pervert/ sex addict bonafides are well established.

I think the basic problem is the internet. It has mainstreamed deviant sexuality. When beta and VHS came out, it supposedly opened up the porn world. Folks didn't have to go to a sleazy theatre to watch their favorite fuck flicks. Fapping with a room full of fellow raincoaters. But you still had to go to some sleazy hole porn shop, or at the very least behind the "curtain" at the mom and pop video store. You had to go out of your way. With the advent of the net, back to the BBS days, an entire world of porn was there simply for the asking, without ever leaving the comfort of your chair. The "Anna" series from Europe, Katie from katies-world, Wifey. It was all there, no dude behind the counter, no hoping no one sees your ar outside the store. Hell, no having to be over 18 to purchase, if you had any USENET savvy at all. People who had never bought a Playboy in their lives were sharing porn with friends, relatives, coworkers, whoever. As technology improved, and you could get video (beyond little 5 second snippets) it became even more mainstreamed. In a 10 year period Ron Jeremy and Jenna Jameson became household names. Fifteen years ago it would have been unheard of for a world class prizefighter to be squiring a porn star in public, let alone knocking one up. I'm sure Jenna loves him for him, not for his future income potential.

So suddenly it's acceptable for mainstrean celebs to hang with porn folks. And the porn cache starts to rub off. Just look at the last several years. It's a usual occurance now to see a "stolen" video of a celeb couple fucking. Who hasn't seen a former Playmate of the Year sucking her husband (drummer in one of the biggest bands in the world) off? Who hasn't seen Paris Hilton, whose celebrity is based less on being super rich than it is on her ability to be photographed dressed like she's at the AVN Awards nominated for Best Anal Scene, gobbing on that guy's knob. Who hasn't seen the cooch and c- section scar of arguably the biggest teen idol of the last 20 years? Check out the greasy skankiness of Christina Aguilara in her early career. Which leads us to the kinderwhores of today. Selena Gomez, the Olsens, the other Disney chicks whose names escape me. And everyone's favorite picture message sender, Smiley Miley. You can deny that media and celebrities has no effect on people. But if that's the case, why does Michael Phelps make a ton of bud money to hawk whatever he hawks? Because we as a society eat that up and rush to the mall when some movie star tells us about the latest bauble we can't live without. And it effects the kids the most.

Miley is marketed to tweens, but their little sisters watch her too. And are influenced by her. Want their hair her way. Want to dress like her. Want to have boys be into them, even if they have no idea what that means. When they see Miley doing that weird pout (straight from porn box covers) in her wife beater, that has a ton of appeal to kids. So the moment they get their hands on a camera, pout pout, post on Facebook. No curves, no hips, but I'm still sexy...whatever that means.

And for whatever reason, mom and dad let them go in public in hip- huggers or pink sweats that say "Princess" on the ass. What message does this, along with a steady diet of Miley and Paris and the skanks on Rock of Love, send to little kids about their value, their worth as females? It may not be as damaging as their uncle touching them when no one's looking, but the same message is being sent. That your worth is as nothing more than a toy for men. Shit. That was awfully feminist sounding. Apologies all around.

No, a tshirt isn't going to make some guy bring the thunder home to his wife, because that's something he already has in him. No, Miley pouting isn't going to turn a tween girl into a slut. What I'm saying is that the cumulative effects of kids being bombarded with sexuality, before they're ready for it, is fucking damaging to them. A slutty teenager turns into a fucked up 20something. And the being fucked up continues, only to be passsed onto the next generation.

What can be done? As a society, I doubt very much. I was having lunch with a friend and fellow forum member today and we were talking about this. He talked about it boiling down to his kid having a better life than he did. Which starts with letting him be a kid. Encouraging, but not forcing, sports. Encouraging, but not forcing, music. Letting him find his own way, but not letting him have full control of the rudder. At the end of the day, that's his job. To parent. To teach. To try to steer him in the right direction. Chances are, when his boy is 40, he won't have a porn collection to rival his dad's, which rivals mine. But he might learn not only how to treat women, but how to steer clear of the wrong ones. A skill neither his father nor I have learned. He might not not either. There's a certain amount of luck involved. But he's being given better skills than his father, and myself for that matter, got.

So I guess the solution begins at home. Raise your kids right. To think with their heads, not their junk. To not be so starved for attention and affection that they'll fall in love with anyone who bats their eyes at them. To let them be kids, because being a kid is a real finite time.

OK, I'm taking my rant gloves off now.

To get back to the original subject, it sucks TShirt Hell is closing, and it sucks worse why. But in our anonymous internet world, assholes can be even bigger assholes without having to worry about getting a sock in the snookum. I can't count how many death threats I've gotten over the years for posting my nitwittery. what is it someone says? The threat of anal rape can be made as long as theres a smiley face at the end. I totally repect the guy's decision to just let it die and not sell it. Very anti- dot.com thinking. I feel for the people being put out of work, but if the previous poster is any indication, these are some bright folks who should be able to land on their feet. I wish them all the luck in the world.

Red