Subversive Puppet Show PR Policies

Being in online PR, I'm sympathetic (moreso than some other 'professionals' in this field who will remain unnamed) to the efforts of those who are trying to dip their toes into the wild and woolly world of blogger outreach. Therefore, if you're a PR professional please find the rules for contacting me below. The rules are kind of like a flow chart: if you meet the criteria for the first rule, continue to the second and so forth. If you make it through, please feel free to drop me a line. If not, please don't waste your time contacting me.

1. I blog as a hobby and am therefore interested in writing about relatively few things. Rather than telling you what I don't want to be contacted about, I'll tell you what I do want to be contacted about. If your product doesn't fit into this list (the exception being Rule 8, below), chances are I'm going to ignore you. The list:
   • Comics, specifically Groo, Hellboy and The Fantastic Four
     
   • Movies of any type, but horror and science fiction specifically
     
   • Video games of all kinds, specifically classic and Xbox 360
     
   • Traditional games of all kinds. Note that I write for some RPG companies on a freelance basis and may not be able (or willing) to talk about a direct competitor to a project upon which I'm working, although it never hurts to ask
     
   • Books, although I'm not terribly keen on nonfiction unless it's about history or religion
     
   • Television, but only The Simpsons, Futurama, Jericho and Battlestar Galactica
     
   • Traveling
     
   • Good wine and good cheese
2. Please take the time to find my name. It's not hard. It's on the blog's heading. Use the correct salutation - if your email begins "Dear Subversive" (as an email I received this morning did) that's as far as I'm reading before I hit "delete." Although some would argue it is unwise, I use my real name on this blog for a reason.
   
3. Don't pretend to have read my blog if you haven't. When I'm doing PR outreach, I either go out of my way to familiarize myself with a blog - typically because I've been reading it already - or I simply recognize that someone might be interested in what I'm selling and go from there. None of this "I really liked your post about X" that I see in so many outreach templates that pass through my hands. Don't lie to me. People online have higher bullshit detectors than normal, and PR people like me create bullshit. I can smell it a mile off, so don't bother.
   
4. If I'm not interested, I'm not interested. If you don't hear from me, one follow-up will suffice. Normally I will at least do you the courtesy of responding but sometimes I simply don't have the time for it. And there's no need to track me down on MSN and Twitter and leave messages for me on Xbox Live and Flickr.
   
5. Understand that my company's blogging policies restrict me from talking about competitor's products and often prevent me from talking about PR competitors in all but the broadest terms. I happen to like my job and want to keep it, so please don't get bent out of shape if I can't discuss your competing product here.
   
6. If your product is blatant advertisement - IE, an advergame - you're really going to have to impress me before I'll write about it. I've supported enough crappy advergames to know what a shitty situation it is trying to get people to write about one, but this isn't the place. Sorry.
   
7. I am not interested in anything racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-religion or hateful. Not only will such things be deleted, you probably won't want the kind of PR I can give you for sending me such a thing.
   
8. The Zombie Rule. Zombies override all other rules here. If you're selling zombies, I don't care if it's an Apple-branded Zombie iPhone that uses NeoOffice, you hit me up 20 times on Xbox Live about it and you misspell my last name - I want to hear about it.

These rules are subject to change without notice, so please review them before contacting me. They will also be permalinked from the front page of this blog.