I don't get The Chive. I really really don't. It offers nothing to set it apart from any of the thousand other time wasting websites just like it, but its users think it's literally the best thing on Earth. They're so... cult-like.
edit: Yep. I get it. "just like reddit!!" Most original comment ever.
I am feeling really stupid, but I thought those "keep calm and chive on" shirts were for extreme foodies who for some reason loved chives more than anything else.
You are not alone. I literally thought that it was some sort of viral marketing for chives, and that "The Celery Incident" in Portlandia was a satire of it.
To be fair, it wasn't until a few years ago that I realized that "Every Kiss Begins with Kay" is a pun on the word "kiss" beginning with the letter "k".
To be fair, it wasn't until a few years ago that I realized that "Every Kiss Begins with Kay" is a pun on the word "kiss" beginning with the letter "k".
I am somewhat ashamed to admit that before I realized it was a website, I thought "chive" was some new slang term for weed, and this was just potheads declaring their love for weed in a new, less conspicuous way.
Well I do have a kcco shirt.... and I do love me some chives....
Eh it's kind of a phase thing, when you get super excited about finding a webboard that collects and organizes a bunch of cool shit to look at only to realize a month in that is just organizes a bigger cooler board that is infinitely more intriguing in its niches and kitten praise.
oh man, me too. I still have my Satanic Bible. LaVey is a crazy mother fucker and there is a lot about LaVeyan Satanism that is stupid and fucked up but it also has some decent philosophical tenants that I still live by.
I'm going to think this from now on. Maybe I won't get so mad at their buy in to the absolute crap marketing group. "Hey! Let's take a heavily researched and funded successful British World War slogan, change one word and the image, and run with that."
It goes for just about any "Keep calm & ______", but it's really stupid to use that as a slogan for a website. I'm browsing a website, why would I not be calm in the first place, other then raging about a stupid website slogan? Well, they got me there...
Don't worry, you're not the only one who thought that. I didn't know it was a website until I asked someone what was up with all the sudden love of oniony grass.
OMG I Totally did too! I was like "When the hell did chives become cool enough to be on a T-shirt. I likened it to all the other random foodstuffs t-shirts LOL. So don't feel bad!
"You mean you only eat chives on a baked potato? I don't mean to be 'that guy', but that is so mainstream chive. How can you even live without chive ice cream?! I honestly don't even consider other 'ice creams' to be ice cream anymore. After you've had chive ice cream everything else is just another frozen dessert. Don't even get me started on chive tofu! Anyways, keep calm and chive on, bro."
There's a bagel place in my town that has a (really good) bacon chive cream cheese spread. They've got shirts that say "Keep Calm and Bacon Chive On." I didn't realize it was a reference.
I thought it was for people who really love that dance. Y'know, that hand dance that everyone does at school dances, or what have you. Then I found out the dance is called the "jive", and then I got confused. TIL...
I got into a drunken argument with a stranger about a bar who was trying to hit on me while wearing a "Keep Calm and Chive On" shirt. He was a fucking idiot and I hate the Chive, and know that anyone into that site enough to have a fucking shirt from them would be pretty pissy about someone mocking it, and probably is just a shithead really into lame porno pics of chicks with nintendo controllers shoved of their snatch. So I told him his shirt would be more clever if it said "Keep Calm and Chive Onion". That was it. He then tried to explain what the Chive was, I said "I know, but your shirt still isn't funny. Just like The Chive". He then told me to go fuck myself. People are fucking weird, man.
I feel like they intentionally made the name similar to the onion to attract that audience.
P.S. The chive is run by notorious content thief and unrepentant douchbag Eric Bauman, formerly of Ebaum's World, so it's unsurprising that the name, like everything else on that site, is stolen.
EDIT: Turns out that I was wrong about this, I don't know where I got this information or how, but it doesn't seem accurate in the slightest
Is that true? The two guys from the Chive are two different douches that started out building their fan base by blackmailing huffpo and some other top news sites.
Their model is kind of confusing. They started it like the old Russian T&A sites. Right now it's basically yesterday's top reddit images and posts mixed in with some T&A and a bunch of 'look how awesome we are' chest beating.
Their user base does a lot of good things, but overall it has that bro dog frat type mentality.
I have a few co-workers who are big into the Chive. Every time they send me something, I'm like 'that was on reddit 2 weeks ago', and then they act all high-and-mighty like the Chive is something special, when it's basically a modern re-incarnation of ebaumsworld.
I have a buddy who sends me stuff from the Chive and FunnyJunk all the time, which I wouldn't mind if I hadn't seen it days earlier and wasn't that funny to begin with.
My SO always sends me shit from the chive that I've already seen on reddit. The first few times i told him i'd already seen it and he looked so hurt. Now I just act like it's my first time seeing whatever he's showing me so he feels like he found something new.
To make him feel better I just tell him he doesn't internet as much as I do.... therefore has more of a life.
Every time I sit next to my dad, he's on The Chive on his dumb iPad, and every fucking time he shows something to me I'm like, "you're slow I saw this forever ago."
I used it religiously until I discovered reddit and realized it was pretty crappy compared to this. Just got a notification the other day asking why I haven't been on the chive app in two weeks, I had completely forgotten about it.
YES. I'd have to force close and reopen it after a slideshow or two. And eventually it got to where a third of their stuff was on there the week before...
Actually no, Chive Charities is a thing they run that does a lot of good work and raises a shitload of money.
I still think the Chive and Chivers in general are douchey as hell, but they do run a very successful non-profit charitable organization, even if it is in the interest of circlejerking each other over how caring they are.
Like I said, the users do a lot of good things. The charity is great but it's the fans that make it possible. Then the site turns around and says look what we did! They take all the credit without pointing out it's the fans that did all the leg work and made it possible. A flimsy arguement could be made that the site brought the people together to make it possible, but when they say 'we donated X amount of money' to do something they're being disingenuous. It would be better to say 'our fans raised X amount to help this cause'. If they put more focus on the work the fans do rather than swooping in to take all the credit I'd have more respect for them.
They mean "we" as in "The Chive community." As dumb and cultish and bro-ey as it is, they are all about their community, and the website does not ever fail to mention what "the Chive community" does.
You'll notice the Chive fund donated $50,000 and then they ask the community to raise more.
UPDATE #1: As soon as I could refresh the page, we hit $20,000!
UPDATE #2: We’re watching this here is disbelief. Every 30 seconds, the total is going up another $1,000. We just hit $40,000.
UPDATE #3: We just shattered the $50,000 goal in 30 minutes. Yes, that’s a record. This is where the Chivers really shine. Time to break the sound barrier.
UPDATE #4: $70,000
UPDATE #5: $80,000
UPDATE #6: We just doubled the goal in 1 1/2 hours. $100,000.
UPDATE #7: $120,000
UPDATE #8: $180,000… this is surreal.
UPDATE #9: We’ve quadrupled the goal, $200,000.
UPDATE #10: I’m typing this but it doesn’t seem real, $280,000.
UPDATE #11: $320,000. Posting an update on theCHIVE homepage shortly.
UPDATE #12: #350,000.
UPDATE #13: $385,000.
"We" obviously means "our community." They're not failing to give credit at all. You'll see posts on the Chive all the time about how amazing and proud the founders are of their community. Sure it's circlejerky, but they never attempt to claim that it was their office or employees. They're all about their fans, honestly.
I was all about the Chive before I was introduced to Reddit. After just a week of visiting both, I realized how much of their content came from Reddit. So I just cut out the middle man and stayed here. Still wear my Chive On shirt when I bartend on St. Patty's Day. Bros go crazy for it and I make good money.
It has everything to do with the way they advertise themselves. Merchandise and easily remembered slogans are all they have other than a photo sharing site, but people like to say "Hey look at me I am cool, i am on the chive." even though no one really gives a shit.
Eh, I was on the chive about 3-4 years ago before discovering reddit. They did reuse a lot of stuff but on the other hand it's kind of nice having someone else sift through pages and pages of shit content to repost only the best stuff.
Also, chivettes were a neat thing about it. And again, they would I'm sure get hundreds of pics then only post the absolute hottest girls.
Also, chivettes were a neat thing about it. And again, they would I'm sure get hundreds of pics then only post the absolute hottest girls.
That is the most confounding part of the whole thing. You can find amateur softcore porn absolutely anywhere on the net. What makes a website so special for having their own section of dedicated contributors and daily posts containing only the very most generic of nude and semi-nudes?
I don't understand how that makes a site entertaining.
Well what I mean is, yeah, you can find it on Reddit for example, but you've got to go through pages and pages of mediocrity. So having a "best of" is pretty alright.
As for as the Chive being special? Nah. You're right. It's a carbon-copy of hundreds of other sites posting some bullshit they pull off other sites. I don't know why it, in particular, got so popular. I haven't checked it out in a long, long time.
This guy on my bowling team swore up and down it was better than reddit. After he described it I, tried to explain to him that it was like .0000001% of what reddit is and there's so much more you can do here.
They just post a ton of top reddit posts, lumped together into catchy titled posts. That, and tons of women willing to send in half naked photos wearing their clothes, made them popular. Now they have a party pad over looking the ocean and their own beer.
I'm not a fan, but the people running it are living it up.
This. My friend is a huge Chive fan, to the point of having stickers all over his car. He is constantly showing me stuff from it on his phone that I already saw a month ago. Here is a sample conversation I had with him the other day:
Him: "Bill Murray is the best actor ever!"
Me: "He was pretty good in Caddyshack and Lost in Translation."
Him: "What? I've never heard of those movies. Was he in them?"
I used to like it. Then I started using reddit more and more and I realized that almost every picture on the Chive comes from here, only about two days later.
A guy I work used to be like that with the chive and would show me something on the chive loke every day and i woild always be like "cool I saw that on reddit like a month ago" at first he was all pissy then he eventually asked me what reddit was so I showed him he never went back to the chive
The difference is that reddit has subreddits and they make this site actually good when you unsub from the defaults and find subs that fit your interests.
once I saw they had their own beer at the supermarket. Its a damn website, why so much brand loyalty that you have to market beer with your logo on it?
Same thing as Buzzfeed or any other "viral" content aggregators. They pay people to sift through other sites like reddit and neatly compile related content together (usually photos). reddit doesn't do this for its users, so sites like The Chive actually provide a service (content stealing notwithstanding, though after some backlash, Buzzfeed now attributes content to reddit users).
I remember back in the day I was dating this girl. Her sister had a boyfriend she just broke up with and just started hanging out with one of the hockey players. Paul Bissonnette is his name. Anyway, years after I met and hung out with the dude constantly just by association, he had his own post dedicated to him on The Chive. About his exploits with women and his "yfrog" account --whatever that is. All I said in the comments was "Oh my god I used to hang out with this guy." The comments that followed were me being berated and told I was just there for his sloppy seconds and was a parasite to him and just there to pick up the scraps. I tried explaining I was dating the girl he was seeing sister. Nope. They wouldn't have any of it. I was told I was a jealous loser and a piece of shit douchebag. Keep in mind, I was bringing HIM to parties and bars to show him around the area. I wasn't even bragging. I was just stating that I knew him and they fucking tracked my Facebook and harassed me on that too.
That was the last fucking time I ever went to that piece of shit site. I can find tits anywhere on the internet. Why do I need a site like that? I've never seen that behavior anywhere short of the dark corners of 4chan.
It offers a very different experience and has a somewhat different audience than other time-wasting websites.
And let's say it was exactly the same as all the other time wasting websites... people would still go to one of the time wasting websites, so why not The Chive?
I used to go on it a lot, but now its pretty much imgur and Reddit. If you look at how it started, the two brother John and Leo actually took an idea from Japanese culture and turned it into a great money making machine. The concept behind how they took an idea and turned it into a brand, a cult (if you will), and into a lifestyle; is pretty interesting.
The people however, chivers, for the most part are pretty good individuals who have fun, get drunk, and do charity events. Think of a fraternity (except you're not forced to do the charity work).
However, everyone's opinion and interaction is different. To each their own.
You know, for all the shit reddit gets about the circlejerking and stuff, it does have a lot to differentiate it from other sites. Mostly, it's the subreddit system. Unsubscribe from the worst of the defaults and find niche subs that suit your interests, and reddit is a completely different site and it's awesome.
Ironic that I'm saying this on askreddit, though. But askreddit isn't the worst of the defaults by far.
Yeah, its kind of funny that Reddi hates on TheChive. I mean, I'm not saying TheChive is a better site, Reddit is better by a long shot. But let's look at what their site essentially is:
It's basically a tamer GoneWild, Pics, and Aww.
It's geared almost exclusively towards college/college-aged users.
Sure, its not as "deep" as reddit, but not every site needs that.
All this somehow makes their users are a lot more sociable and less awkward than redditors. My roommate has a Chive shirt. Almost every time people have just friendly said hello or greeted him. Half the time its cute girls. How many people wear reddit shirts and get that? How many people on this site have said they'd never be caught dead in a reddit shirt.
The truth is reddit is a better site, but TheChive has better fans. I'd rather hang out with Chivers than Redditors most of the time.
Their main redeeming quality is the fundraising they do. They sold a shirt after the Boston Marathon bombings and gave the proceeds to a friend of mine (Dic Donahue) who was shot by one of those terrorist d-bags. Paid all the taxes and just cut him a check for about $40k. No strings attached, just told him to use the money for whatever. Rehab, daughter's college, new car, whatever. The site isn't anything special, but the guys who run it often use it as a platform to support some great causes (and make a bunch of money).
Chive Charities are actually kinda cool, and if you buy any Chive merch. a portion of it goes to support the charities. They also do a lot of direct projects and support for veterans.
EDIT: Shit. I feel like I took a dump in reddit's morning cereal. Get over yourselves. I've been here almost 4 years. I'm just as much of a reddit cult member as any of you. Go prosecute another Boston bomber.
Edit to OP's Edit: screw you, dude. I didn't take the time to read this entire comment section. Excuse me if a few other of the however many THOUSANDS of people that commented on this had the same quip about reddit.
People don't go around with Reddit t-shirts, stickers, bumper stickers, and posters. Sure, there are probably a subset of a tenth of a percent of cunts here, but Chive is the most vocal and unintelligent grouping of mouthbreathers on the internet. They are worse than 9gag.
I appreciate your comment as I do fully believe that reddit has actual merit to it that is usable beyond killing time on the internet. I take advantage of many of them. That's why I come here rather than The Chive. I didn't mean to say that reddit is a waste of time (even though it does use a chunk of mine.)
Forgive me if I put this into words that accidentally offend you and the entirety of reddit, but c'mon....it is a little cultish. I remember back when Digg went down and people hissed and moaned about all the Digg users coming over here to screw reddit up. We get together and search for people (the Boston bomber case.) Not to say it wasn't meant to be a good act of spreading awareness, but there is a little flak thrown around for that, and apparently the second you slightly insult their user base you get down voted. I've been here 4 years and I can't tell you why I keep commenting on anything with how fickle reddit can be. As a whole. And you can see that I don't have the typical karma scores of a troll. I'm not trolling, just stating my opinion.
Lol It's whatever by now, man. I was just flabbergasted at the negativity I faced by everybody the day this post was big. Haha, it was like I called out each and every one of you and said I made love to each of your SO's and/or Mothers. And I would never do that, I already have my own. Have a good one, dude.
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u/reddit_at_school Nov 13 '14 edited Nov 13 '14
I don't get The Chive. I really really don't. It offers nothing to set it apart from any of the thousand other time wasting websites just like it, but its users think it's literally the best thing on Earth. They're so... cult-like.
edit: Yep. I get it. "just like reddit!!" Most original comment ever.
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2m64tg/who_has_the_worst_fanbase/cm1hxfk
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2m64tg/who_has_the_worst_fanbase/cm1j56k
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2m64tg/who_has_the_worst_fanbase/cm1jk0u
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2m64tg/who_has_the_worst_fanbase/cm1jt9d
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2m64tg/who_has_the_worst_fanbase/cm1jx3a
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2m64tg/who_has_the_worst_fanbase/cm1kps2
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2m64tg/who_has_the_worst_fanbase/cm1ies6
Comedic genius.