There are three phases of life. 1. When you don't know any of the songs playing in the elevator. 2. When you know all the songs playing in the elevator. 3. When you don't know any of the songs playing in the elevator. I feel like I'm getting closer to phase three. Not because I've just celebrated my 49th birthday. Nor because of Muzak; it's been so long since I've been in an office lift they're showing the Elevator News Network for all I know. No, it's down to the fact that Justin had never heard of the word "cheesecake." It's an old-fashioned expression (sigh) referring to semi-pornographic pictures of attractive women (I daren't ask Justin about T and A). You may have noticed there's a lot of these sorts of pictures hereabouts, as of late. Frank made the decision to deploy garage wall pinups after contemplating our 4856th image of a Toyota Prius. I agreed because I'm largely heterosexual (so to speak), and what the Hell– it's not all about you. We realize this shift has rendered TTAC less cubicle-friendly. And so we've charged out boffins with creating a button to make TTAC a text-only site. Meanwhile, your thoughts?
Find Reviews by Make:
Correction: GM is paying part of its UAW workforce a total $1m a WEEK not to work.
I complained about this some time ago (not only not cubicle friendly, but you may very well be turning away heterosexual female readers as well), and my solution was to simply right click on the image in Firefox (Linux amd64/Firefox 3.?) and do “block images” and that seems to work just fine.
Other than the (many times) questionable photos, I really love the website & am quite addicted.
Robstar:
I complained about this some time ago (not only not cubicle friendly, but you may very well be turning away heterosexual female readers as well), and my solution was to simply right click on the image in Firefox (Linux amd64/Firefox 3.?) and do “block images” and that seems to work just fine.
Thanks for the helpful hint!
Our surveys show that the overwhelming majority of our readers are male. However, some of them aren’t. And some are gay, male and female (the current shots should prove acceptable to the latter).
How would you feel about himbos?
I am not sure what a himbo is (male bimbo?) but I would prefer pictures of cars, myself :) Maybe a classic car/picture series? I’m sure other people will roll in some (probably better than mine) suggestions as well.
…and here’s me thinking were only either domestiphiles or domestiphobes
I just keep an eye on where my coworkers are, the pics are fine by me.
PS. I had no idea cheesecake had two meanings.
Robstar:
We haven’t abandoned cars. We just use the “glamour” shots when there’s no exciting four-wheeled imagery. I mean, hybrid Chevy Malibu? Zzzzzzzzzzz.
Lose the cheesecake. Just like TWAT, it adds nothing, limits your appeal, and ultimately, reach. As a fellow cube dweller (and network administrator), I am about ready to mark this site NSFW. Your solution of blocking all pictures just to use the site is not acceptable: I still want to see the cars.
I vote for actual pictures of cheesecake. It’s delicious.
I really like this site, and the features and reviews keep me clicking over here 10 times a day, but I find all these pictures of booby ladies annoying. Not because I’m some social conservative, but because I think hubba-hubba pics are for meatheads, and I always considered this a more thoughtful site. I’m not some slobbering knuckle-dragger; I come here for the interesting articles and debates, not to see oiled-up 19 year olds dry-humping Ferraris.
It’s kind of a branding issue, really, and these pics are the type of thing you’d see in Low Rider Magazine and not in respectable publications. If you want to brand this as a dopey babe site, so be it. You gotta make your call and get your clicks, so keep it up if it keeps the site available… I’ll just keep rolling my eyes.
I think you could do better than gratuitous shots of women with fake breasts. Makes me feel like I’m reading Hot Rod.
Pictures of rabbits with pancakes on their head, those are both funny and poignant.
Yeah, a checkbox to disable pictures on articles where you couldn’t find a relevant one, but leave pictures where they’re actually relevant, that would be a reasonable solution to me. It would allow me to maintain work-friendliness, while still seeing the rabbit with a pancake on its head.
I’m personally not averse to pics of cheesecake. In fact, I’ll admit I like the odd cheesecake pic now and again. But it does seem a bit gimmicky and maybe just a tad tasteless on this site. TTAC is also pretty light on the car porn, which makes the T & A shots seem incongruous.
Lose the cheesecake. There are lots of places to go to get cheesecake when you’ve got the urge. I don’t want any at TTAC.
You want to increase your readership, web hits, membership, etc. then don’t marginalize TTAC with garage posters, childish names (TWAT), etc. that otherwise diminish the ‘Best and Brightest’ audience you currently have. You probably have plenty of women lurkers on your site (that don’t post regularly) and are professional, articulate and equally knowledgable about cars and industry. Do you really want to turn this place into yet another juvenile blog?
The site is The Truth About Cars, not cheesecake. Car pictures probably get boring and repetitive, but are your core competency.
Delicious as the cheesecake may be (and I am old enough to know what it means) it doesn’t really go with the professional nature of the site. Ditch the skin and go back to explicit car pics.
“Lose the cheesecake. Just like TWAT, it adds nothing, limits your appeal, and ultimately, reach.”
Take the TWAT, leave the cheescake…
The TWAT-award is one of the most awaited features on this site, in my mind.
And as for cheesecake, the jump between fourteen and forty-nine does not seem to be that big. A midlife crisis, perhaps?
As a cubicle dweller in a very open office I have started to minimize the screen when I go to TTAC, and then slowly open it up in case there is a Politically Incorrect picture as part of the article. Just don’t need to be told I can’t go TTAC or have it blocked here at work. It’s what gets me through the day!
Because of TTAC, I now chuckle whenever I see a Cheesecake Factory.
For me there has always been a huge connection between cars and girls. (not trying to offend)Keep the pictures just don’t get carried away.
I also read Hot Rod and there are few “cheesecake” pictures in it Jordon.
Is there a joke here about a TTAC reader and a bicycle?
The internet is and always has been for adults, a little cheesecake hurts no one, especially the pics on TTAC. I don’t see any money shots here and RF doesn’t put anything up that is offensive. So there is a picture of a smiling girl with a tight shirt across her chest. Who cares?
Don’t go to CNN or Fox news since there might be a picture of a movie star in a bathing suit with a smile.
There hasn’t been anything that wouldn’t be shown on Yahoo so I don’t really mind or worry about it. Then again I also have a 3M privacy screen.
I have a female officemate and find myself sometimes avoiding TTAC while they’re in the other chair – it’s a potential harassment issue. The cheesecake checkbox would be a very useful feature, if it could be implemented – then we could see pictures cheesecake slices, as sean362880 suggested.
I really don’t care about pics of chicks, to be honest.
I don’t mind them, and they’re nowhere near pronography or even Pirelli calendar nudity, but they distract from the focus of the site. And yes, if my wife checks the car blog I talk about all the time and sees cheerleaders on it, she’ll make endless fun of me and TTAC.
I’m really annoyed by the cheesecake. I feel like it creates an atmosphere that’s hostile to your non-straight-male readership and drags down the intellectual property values. I’d say cut it the hell out. (And no, alternating pictures of scantily clad men would not help.)
Machines and their business, before cheese please.
You could have a separate all cheese, all the time room, but I wouldn’t go there. I’ve spent enough years trying to train the cheese I have already. And I know if you ask my mate, the feeling’s mutual.
Ingvar
I love the ten worst autos feature as well. I was referring to changing its former name (TWAT) as being a correct decision from a marketing standpoint.
thank you for the cheesecake. the cheerleader photo’s were great !!!
I liked the pancake bunny.
Jordan Tenenbaum: I second the rabbits with pancakes.
I, for one, like looking at the Prius.
Makes me exceedingly happy that I dont own it.
sean362880 Says:
July 10th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
I vote for actual pictures of cheesecake. It’s delicious.
It’s a food too?
I just try to be as careful as possible regarding the website and the internet in general, as I am technically not supposed to use my work computer for private uses even during breaks, but nobody that I know of obeys that rule anyway.
I love the cheesecake, and this is 1st amendment stuff here people. Throw all the all the Politically Correct stuff out the window. This is where it starts, people complain about the pics, then the occasional curse word or funny acronym, next thing you know it’s all sanitized and painless and ultimately useless. Didn’t we learn anything from Carlin?!?!
Your TV has a knobs on the front, as do your radio and your computer, but trying to be unoffensive to everybody makes you nothing but irrelevant. If you have female cubemates and you’re not cracking jokes with them all day long, there’s something wrong with you!
Happy birthday RF!
BTW I hit the 49 mark in a month myself.
I think the cheerleaders worked for a few items as you were tweeking the detroit pom-pom shakers.
Over do it and it gets meaningless.
Don’t mind if it’s tasteful, but when you get trashy you do lower the sites style.
Frankly, trashy language does the same.
Respect comes from results for sure, but if you prevent to many form even looking or listening you reduce your impact in an industry that needs more tell-it-like-it-is (and not a fake “extremist” who tries to hide his pom-poms).
Sure, have some fun…but don’t lose your focus.
Some thoughts.
Bunter
Lose the Cheesecake.
The First Amendment argument is a red-herring. Sure, the First Amendment gives you the right to do a lot of things, but so what?
The question is not what is legal and what can you get away with, but what do you want to be about?
If you want to be a teenage boy poster site, getting fat from all the eye candy you’re eating, you can do that. If you want to be a high class, leading edge auto website that is taken seriously, you can do that too.
The more T & A the better. After all, we didn’t want a hot car in high school just to go fast. It had to help reap in the babes.
Show me a car show without fine women. Call me a meathead, neanderthal, or draconian. Any guy that doesn’t appreciate nice curves on either item, start throwin the dirt on him.
Men are visual, women are strategic.
Cheesecake has it’s place in my diet and on the screen. The cheerleaders have been nice and tasteful, I get tired of seeing the same old picture over and over.
The cheerleaders were just fine, and even funny when they got used on articles that didn’t relate directly to “cheesecake”. But even a Monty Python skit has to end, and move on to “something completely different”.
I actually have a car-related photo or two that I could “donate” for the site, maybe ask your readers to add some visual content as well.
But, always keep a fresh stash of babes and bunnies (with pancake) for those “off days”.
Ultimate truth:”What the Hell– it’s not all about you”. My advice: Go direct to porn.
Personally, pictures of cheerleaders on the sidelines, and Scarlett Johansson at the Oscars don’t bother me at all. If your company is that strict, you probably shouldn’t surf the internet at work at all.
The one picture from like “downblouseamateur.com” is sourced from more of a pseudo-porn site, so I can see how that might get folks in trouble.
So I would say, keep the cheesecake images from a SFW source.
___
Really this isn’t the 1st time TTAC put up nearly NSFW photos. Has everyone forgot about the TTAC story about the gay porn star “Lexus”?
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/lexus-hooks-up-with-uh-maybe-not/
The original photo that went along with the news item had a full-body shot of “Lexus” with only his hand over his moneymaker. The hand-to-crotch ratio was such that pubic hair was visible in the picture.
I gotta admit that I’m not a fan of the cheesecake on this site. There’s plenty of other places to purvey that, and while yes, there is a monotony to posting the same picture over and over, it’s the focus of this site. This isn’t “The Truth About Cars and Pictures of Chicks,” right?
I dont mind the cheesecake. Cars and pretty women go together like gin and olives. Especially when the cute blonde is hiding an ugly POS like a Range Rover.
RF:
Correction: GM is paying part of its UAW workforce a total $1m a WEEK not to work
Even ~$50m per year isn’t bad, although any amount is rough for GM. The real cost is the motivational destruction it does to workers who (due to seniority, job classification, and/or bad luck) can’t get such paid vacations…
It’ll be interesting to see if any transplants have labor issues if they layoff in the near future. My guess is no
unbelievable. Show them and if some decide they don’t approve, don’t look or text only. Can’t anybody loosen up anymore?
I love the female form, and I don’t know when I became such a grumpy old man, but I actually don’t feel like the cheesecake adds to the site. I think it detracts from your writing and makes you a touch more lad-mag style. My suggestion would be to use it sparingly: it’s more of a treat when it happens, and it doesn’t distract from the site’s main mission: telling the truth about cars.
I’m with kazoomaloo
“I really like this site, and the features and reviews keep me clicking over here 10 times a day, but I find all these pictures of booby ladies annoying. Not because I’m some social conservative, but because I think hubba-hubba pics are for meatheads, and I always considered this a more thoughtful site. I’m not some slobbering knuckle-dragger; I come here for the interesting articles and debates, not to see oiled-up 19 year olds dry-humping Ferraris.”
ps thanks for asking for feedback. the responsiveness of the site to its (great) commenters is one of the things I like here.
It doesn’t offend me, but it doesn’t titillate me either. There’s always room for jell-o, but you don’t want it 7 days a week. Keep it more GQ and less Maxim I think (but throw a bone once in a while when appropriate)
The “focus” one was funny. (Cause it was a distraction.) After that, not so much.
IMHO cheese cake and foul language are used to enhance mediocre content. Great content,such as TTAC, should not use it.
I vote against the cheesecake. It puts out a vibe that I just don’t dig.
Keep the “bad” language though, I like that.
Assuming that the silent majority will remain silent, and agree with the main sentiment expressed, we hereby terminate operation cheesecake.
We will henceforth restrict our images to non-salacious content, unless specifically relevant. Like symbolic cheerleaders represented by real ones.
We will also work our way backwards to remove the worst offenders. (It may be tough letting go of some.)
Thanks for the feedback. And now, back the Gallactica.
BOOOOOOOO!!
I guess I have less in common with the readers of this site than I thought.
Oh Well!!!
I don’t know about the rest but I browse on a widescreen LCD and the browser has a vertical scrollbar.
I’m fine with having more than one picture per article. I’m fine with a user preference to not show the cheesecake.
I personally like the cheesecake but I don’t need to see it on every article.
I like the pancake bunny and the gas pumps and the pictures of corn and whatever makes sense sitting near the article title.
If you want to make a gallery for Auto show booth babes go for it. Link to the brand specific booth babes in each deathwatch article but I don’t think a booth babe is the cause or effect of a domestic auto manufacturer’s financial crisis.
Let’s see. Another picture of a Prius or a picture containing a new use for newspaper.
I think Frank made a good decision.
I’m with Alex Rodriguez:
“Lose the Cheesecake.
The First Amendment argument is a red-herring. Sure, the First Amendment gives you the right to do a lot of things, but so what?
The question is not what is legal and what can you get away with, but what do you want to be about?
If you want to be a teenage boy poster site, getting fat from all the eye candy you’re eating, you can do that. If you want to be a high class, leading edge auto website that is taken seriously, you can do that too.”
not everyone has the talent/ability/balls to do what you guys are doing on this site. obviously, your efforts have been rewarded with a strong following (myself included) who pine for witty, informative, and hilarious automotive articles “telling it like it is.” anyone can post pin-ups.
my thanks for your decision.