So I’m drinking coffee at the Weatherstone, one of those faux hip cafes with brick walls and fenced courtyards that midtown Sacramento seems to specialize in, when it hits me: Twenty feet from where I sit is the crime scene. My companion doesn’t seem to care – although he was the criminal. Perhaps Rob Cockerham is, for lack of a better word, “cocky.”
“I noticed that Java City had this sign,” Cockerham said. “It was an illustrated sign. It showed how to put the lid on a cup of coffee.” It’s a petty annoyance, a small totem to ward off the lawsuit madness that has infected the entire country: instructions on how to put the lid on a paper cup. Most people pass similar signs dozens of times a day and simply move on.
Not Cockerham.
“I’ve had a lot of experience making signs that look like other signs and replacing the original,” he said. “I decided to take advantage of that and make a brand new sign that had similar illustrations and similar instructions, but I decided to make the words a bit more risque.”
So “Place the cup on a flat surface while holding the cup in one hand, carefully snap the lid on with your other hand,” became “Begin by placing your hot cup of coffee on a firm, hard surface. Run your fingers slowly around the rim, checking for unusual bumps or swelling.”
And “Check to make sure the lid is securely applied by running your fingers around the edge of the cup rim,” became “Press the lid gently onto the cup, and slide your thumb down the lip, forming a tight seal around the top. Now the cup is ready for your eager mouth.”
“I’m kind of proud of the bit of poetry on that sign,” Cockerham said. “It was subtle enough that I could put it up and people would hopefully take notice, but no one would ever complain to the manager about it being too risqué. I do get kind of defensive about taking a lot of time to make a new sign, put it up and get it laminated, put it in place, then have it come down the next day.”
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¿Habla Usted Cockeyed? A recent feature on Cockeyed.com is the ability to enjoy some of the features in different languages. Spanish, Dutch and Arabic have been added and more are on the way. “I went to Europe in 1999. I guess I kind of realized that, while English is a very important language in the world, it’s not the only one,” Cockerham said. “I could see in my Web logs that people from other countries are taking a look at my site. My site’s only in English. They probably enjoyed the photos, but they’re probably losing my fabulous writing. “A year after I asked my friend Jennifer to translate it, and she said, ‘No.’ I just put a note up on the site asking for volunteers. Actually, I asked for quotes, but no one quoted me any money, they just said, ‘I’ll do it.’” C’est magnifique! |
Cockerham and his friends created and laminated dozens of signs and replaced them at Java City locations all over Sacramento—including The Weatherstone. And every step from creation to deployment was carefully documented on Cockerham’s pride and joy, Cockeyed.com, where it was discovered weeks later by Java City employees, who liked the joke so much they considered printing t-shirts, until humorless managers put the kibosh on the idea. Rob documented the aftermath on Cockeyed as well.
Everyone Likes Cock
“At first, I’m certain that I got a lot of people just cruising around looking for anything ‘cock’ related,” Cockerham pondered, when asked how the site became popular. But Cockerham doesn’t have to rely on Internet porn addiction to get traffic anymore.
Cockeyed.com has made Cockerham into an unlikely Internet celebrity. On an average day, anywhere from 200 to 500 people check out his site for regular features such as How Much Is Inside? Science Club and the ever-popular Pranks. If a Cockeyed story gets linked to by Metafilter or Memepool, the hits go into the thousands. “Recently, I had a story listed on Fark, and that gave me so much traffic that the site went down,” Cockerham said.
Cockerham has theories about why Cockeyed had become so popular. “I have a ridiculous number of photos on the site,” he said. “It’s generally known as ‘bad Web site design’ to put a bunch of really big photos on your Web page. It takes forever to download, and it beats the hell out of your server, too. But, I don’t care. I’ve got a high-speed connection, and I know people have high-speed connections at work, so look at it at work.”
While Cockeyed.com may spit in the face of conventional design wisdom, its unconventional nature is the very thing that keeps people coming back. Cockerham and his friends have discovered how many Cheerios are in a box, they’ve built a cat out of matchsticks and built a paper-mache Elvis for Internet portal Yahoo.
“How Much Is Inside?” is the site’s most popular feature. An experiment to discover how mush silly string is in a can proved exceptionally popular. “I’ve become the world’s greatest authority on silly string,” Cockerham said matter-of-factly. “I had the company that makes it call me. I’ve had a researcher from The Weakest Link write me and ask me about silly string.” So perhaps Cockerham inadvertently helped Anne Robinson and her acid-dipped wit humiliate a computer salesman from Tulsa on national television. Nobody’s perfect.
The common folk may like “How Much Is Inside?” but true Cockeyed connoisseurs know the real fun is in the elaborate pranks Rob and company have played on local businesses.
The Java City signs stayed up for weeks, but that pales next to the prank Rob played on a local shopping mall. “I replaced a strawberry with a turkey in Downtown Plaza,” Cockerham said. The strawberry was part of a large brass display for the food court in the mall. Someone stole it. Sensing opportunity, Rob replaced the brass fruit with Styrofoam poultry. The turkey was painted gold to match the rest of the signs. It stayed up for eight months before it was removed. “I think that was more because it got destroyed by drunks from America Live, than because anyone that who worked at the mall noticed.”
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Rob v. Herbalife One of the most recent features on the site is Rob’s one-man campaign to eliminate “work from home” and “have a computer?” signs from the streets of fair Sacramento. In his research he discovered that almost all the signs were the product of the evil multi-level marketing scam Herbalife. Rob wrote the mayor. He called dubious 800 numbers that had nothing at all to do with “horny housewives.” He researched the quasi-pyramid scheme Herbalife calls a marketing plan and laid the bald truth out there: No one wants this crap. An interesting side note, the main ingredient in the original Herbalife formula is ephedrine. Ephedrine is one of the primary ingredients in crystal methamphetamines or “crank.” This makes sense as I’ve never seen a really fat crank addict. |
Contrast that success with the disappointment of another Cockeyed prank. “The car that they give away in the mall? I did a prank where I made myself the winner of the new car,” Cockerham said. “I put my own picture up, announced that I was the winner of 2001 Chrysler Sebring and wrote it all up as if I had won. Unfortunately, I put that up on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. So they were gone almost immediately.”
For The Love
We’re sitting outside in the Weatherstone’s little courtyard. My questions are drowning in a sea of white noise provided by a leaf blower across the street. The Mexican gardener is wearing a white jumpsuit and mask to filter out the dust cloud he is kicking into the air. He looks like a second-rate Ghostbuster. I shout my question over the roar of the two-stroke motor:
“Why do you do it?”
Pause. “Well, it’s not the money,” he says dryly. In fact, the Web site takes time and money to produce—a lot of time. So what’s the motivation?
“It’s like making a stage, then putting myself up on it,” Cockerham said. “The applause doesn’t come immediately. People write in. I’d say my average e-mail from people that I’ve never met, people that I just don’t know, is like 12 a week. It’s very, very satisfying, because they always tell you what country they’re from.”
“I get e-mail from people that I don’t know from all over the world,” he continues. “I got one from Pakistan about two weeks ago. That was pretty damn cool. They run across the site and they write in and they say, ‘Gosh, you’re the greatest thing ever,’ or ‘This is the gayest thing I’ve ever read,’ but mainly in favor of ‘the greatest thing ever’.”
I originally wrote this story for Wirehed Magazine, the best damn computer magazine in the world. Check it out.
Cockeyed is a fantastic site, it’s great fun for all the family, especially the how much is inside an ink cartridge
Herbalife never used “ephedrine”, but did stop using “ephedra” in its products. Sounds like Rob could use a (at least one)lesson in journalism.
I think you’re wrong, Dave. Herbalife made a big deal out of its new product: “Ephedrine-Free Green.”
Rob’s journalism looks fine to me.
John,
The product is called Ephedra-Free Green, not Ephedrine-Free Green. Herbalife has also added a product called Total Control, which is Ephedra-Free.
I enjoy the dissenting opinions, though I disagree, because this is a great country and we all look at things with our own opinion-formed consciences.
Herbalife works for me and I sure am glad we don’t do signs anymore.
Hmmm…when I put “Ephedrine-Free Green” into Google, I get lots and lots of hits. But I also get lots of hits for “Ephedra-Free Green.”
But, we are splitting hairs here. I spent some time trying to find out what the difference was. The FDA has issued one warning to cover both. Ephedra and Ephedrine both have the exact same nasty side effects, including heart attack, stroke, tachycardia, paranoid psychosis, depression, convulsions, coma, fever, vomiting, palpitations, hypertension, and respiratory depression.
I guess if I vomit while having convulsions, I’m bound to lose some weight.
hey, i manage a java city in philadelphia. was wondering if you had any more of those signs lying around. i’d be glad to put them up.
I wonder where this Cockerham gets all the money to “slam” people about their home-based businesses. It takes some money to post all over google — I wonder if he is reporting his annual income? It would be nice for someone to write an article about him and his “journalism” — I find it insulting! The website that he has constructed just shows what kind of crap this guy is involved in.
Ephedrine is simply the chemical active ingredient of the herb, “Ephedra”.
so anything containing ephedra contains ephedrine.
anything ephedrine-free cannot contain ephedra.
I don’t see how Rob’s financial status is relevant to this discussion.
If he wants to lose money building a website to portray his interests, and issues he’s concerned about include visual pollution, then let him.
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Hmm. The growling sound we heard on the morning of Dec. 18 was someone who just knows his downline will be growing, um… Really, really soon. Then Mr. Peterson can finally pay off the thousands of dollars he owes to various credit card companies, racked up purchasing cheap vitamins and training videos. He’ll take his friends out to dinner to celebrate…
Whoopsie, my mistake. In MLMs like Herbalife (and Amway) you don’t have friends: you have potential customers and distribution recruits.
It’s the recruits that make people rich, since the cheap vitamins “distributors” are trying to hawk are purchased through their upline, the guys who put up enough signs saying ‘WORK FROM HOME: $1200/WEEK PART-TIME’ to rope in fresh meat.
There is NO MONEY in multi-level marketing “home-based businesses,” at least not from selling the products to consumers. The heavy moolah only rolls in when you’re selling the products to the bottom of the MLM food chain, the ‘downline’: the ones trying to convince everyone they know their lives are incomplete without Cellular Nutrition® with Thermojetics®, N-R-G Tablets, and Thermojetics® Ultimate Green Program with Total Control™ program packs. (A great way to have a positive influence on aquaintances and co-workers: “Looks like you need to cut some weight; have I got a product for you!”)
Okay, so maybe Mr. Peterson has actually developed a downline. Commission checks now actually have three, maybe four digits on the left side of the decimal point. However, it’s my considered opinion that if the hours devoted to clawing a little further up the pyramid had been spent working a normal, ‘non-enterprenurial’ job, he would have more money to show for it.
Sure, people make shitloads of money from MLMs: They’re the ones who got in early, before every car in California began sporting “Lose Weight Now – Ask Me How!” bumper stickers. Hats off to ‘em; they’re living The American Dream… Which has never had much to do with choices of concience.
And – lest anyone assume this is an attack on H/L distributors or Mr. Peterson – you’re wrong. This is a head-smack, yes… One that will hopefully make would-be MLM millionaires sit still for a minute, take a couple of deep breaths, and ask themselves a few questions, and really think about the answers:
“Am I in more debt, or less, than I was before I began hawking Quixtar/HerbaLife/Amway[etc.]?”
“If this is part-time work, why am I so stressed out and tired?”
“In the past three months, have I had to choose between paying a bill and purchasing materials from my upline? And what was my decision?”
Like the Dead Kennedys said: “[Y]ou can get rich / But your boss gets richer off you.”
And lastly… I was never involved with any MLMs: The math didn’t work. The admittedly savage opinions I hold of MLMs are the result of research done on how the psychology of individuals is manipulated in controlled, cult and cult-like settings. MLMs, the big ones, hold the qualifications to be considered cult organizations, namely:
Critical inquiry is not tolerated.
Financial accountability for the highest echelons is murky or unavailable.
Anyone who leaves is a failure.
The organization is ALWAYS right.
Non-members who question or criticize the organization are trying to destroy the organization and/or the member.
The only way to succeed is the organization’s way: other methods that are attempted (or even suggested) are dismissed as certain to fail, blasphemies.
Mr. Peterson’s post, sadly, exhibits signs of a ‘True Believer.’ Obviously, Rob Cockerham is evil: he questioned the behaviors of the organization! He is part of a larger conspiracy to discredit and destroy the organization. May I quote and correct:
“I wonder where this Cockerham gets all the money to “slam” people about their home-based businesses.”
Web hosting, even for a big site like cockeyed.com, ain’t that much money a month: $30 at most.
“It takes some money to post all over google –”
Mr. Peterson is unclear on how search engines work. Cockeyed.com has no paid listings on Google.
“I wonder if he is reporting his annual income?”
Why would he do that? Oh, because he’s funded by a Conspiracy against the Organization. Silly me.
“It would be nice for someone to write an article about him and his “journalism” — ”
Several people already have written about Mr. Cockerham; you’re responding to an article about him, remember? Also, Mr. Cockerham doesn’t claim to be a journalist. He is a prankster, a webmaster, and he has an inquisitive mind. The cockeyed.com article which worked you into a tizzy was the result of him satisfying his own curiosity about ass-ugly signs appearing on telephone polls. It wouldn’t have mattered if the signs were the product of HerbaLife, Amway, Walgreens, Fat Vinnie’s Pizzeria, or the Republican National Committee: when he got his answers, he published ‘em.
“I find it insulting!”
You’re insulted easily, and inexplicably. Mr. Cockerham’s article reported on how a large corporation is indirectly responsible for junking up roadsides all over Sacramento, not how Paul Peterson is responsible for junking up roadsides… Are you?
“The website that he has constructed just shows what kind of crap this guy is involved in.”
Yeah. Boy, I hate it when people mount styrofoam chickens in malls, put up cryptic sidewalk signs, lampoon fast food ads, and calculate the number of ping-pong balls that will fit in a Chevy Blazer, then publish the results on their website. He must be some kinda godless commie.