In This Economy?

On February 2, 2009, in-this-economy.com went live. The year that followed was filled with adventure, humor, love, hate, music, power, majesty, politics, jokes, hair, opportunity, typos, crap, talent, money, fame, wenches, stats and memories. It was glorious.

So now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to spend the next thousand-ish words rehashing that glory.

If you’re new to the fun, this will serve as a great way to catch up.

If you’ve been with us from the start then you can join us on this trip down memory lane.

And if you hate us, well, why the hell are you looking at this?

Let’s get started.

FEBRUARY!!!

Rondostar, breadwinner and I decided to start ITE while eating lunch at an IHOP. I had an omelette. It was pretty average.

As I said above, the site went live on February 2nd of last year and some highlights from our first-ever month were:

• Our first post (Yeah this one is pretty weak, but that’s only because we had no idea what we were doing.)
• Our first taste of the power of free stuff (That free Denny’s thing was insane.)
• Our first jab at corporate greed (This would become a major theme, especially in those first few months.)
• The first shithead trading card (Good old R. Allen Stanford, who is now rotting away in prison)

MARCH!!!

From there we kept on rolling into March. We were starting to define the overall theme of ITE a little more (though that theme is still pretty loosey-goosey even to this day) and the writing kept improving (right, guys?).

Here are a few highlights from March:

• We whored ourselves out for Dairy Queen (DQ was having a competition amongst bloggers to see who would do the most ridiculous things for free Dairy Queen food and prizes. Naturally we made them a proposal that had (in our minds) no rival. We would later find out that we had come in third place, which was awesome yet slightly dissapointing.)
• We wrote about both the staycation AND the work-cation (Hard-hitting journalism. Always.)
• Annette Yeomans (The woman we labeled “Shoe Bitch” turned out to be great for us. She was one of our first-ever major SEO successes. Her story also led to an exciting moment when one of the Mrs. Yeomans’ former friends sent us a picture of her after we complained that the Internet didn’t have any. That picture provided a weird taste of investigative journalism that we’re still sort of waiting to be sued for.)
• The first-ever “WASTE OF MONEY” article (This would go on to be a huge series on ITE, and the first one, which talked about Truck Nuts, gave us our first taste of how awesome it is when a lot of random people find and comment on your blog.)
• breadwinner took on Rick Perry for the first time (The first of many.)
• The first-ever “Distractions” post (There have been a lot of these since. Crazy love to Mark Gormley for getting it all started. Little Wings 4 Eva!)

APRIL!!!

March was rad but it was nothing compared to April. April was the month when we really started to get it, and we had some great success as a result of that.

Here are some highlights from April:

• The ITE April Fool’s Day prank (It was beautiful.)
• rondostar dropped the Beat Tape Bailout (This post was really popular and gave us some much needed street-cred. Or something.)
• The first “Top 5 Untapped Money-Making Ideas” post (This is my favorite series to write on ITE so I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention its origins.)
• breadwinner’s war against Rick Perry strikes gold (This post got linked to on the Huffington Post, and as a result, had a traffic explosion. In addition to the boost in traffic we got some GREAT comments out of it as well. Check them out if you have some time.)
• Missy Quinn (Logun’s story about Missy Quinn, a gross gypsy woman who threw an insanely grandiose wedding, would go on to be one of our most-viewed stories ever.)
• We made fun of Swine Flu (Kind of dickish? Yes. Kind of funny? Definitely.)
• The ITE vs. Creed war began (This long-fought conflict has defined ITE in many ways. On April 28th it began. Check out the comments on that post and be amazed.)

MAY!!!

Now we were rolling. Fueled by Rick Perry and Creed hatemail we kept plugging away. Here are a few highlights:

• We weighed in on the insane KFC free chicken giveaway (I’m pretty sure that KFC gave away free chicken every day in the month of May, or at least that’s how it seemed.)
• ITE went to Portland (SurlyZ’s began his travel reporting with a bang… in Portland.)
• We saw Terminator Salvation (which I would later crown the shittiest movie of the entire summer)

JUNE!!!

The summer arrived and with it came a whole new set of things to make fun of. So, naturally, we made fun of a lot of them. Some of the highlights from June were:

• We took on Facebook quizzes for the first time (We would come back for more a second and a third time. We were drunk on our hatred of those damn things.)
• We investigated something called Superstore (It opened right down the street from us so it only made sense to check it out. It was one of our first-ever video heavy posts.)
• We checked back in on the local superheroes phenomenon (Not kidding.)
• The Mac and Me wheelchair scene got some love (It’s still one of the finest things ever committed to film. Ever.)
• We did a podcast (This was our first chance to work with the team that would eventually become our SXSW crew — Alyssa and Colin from fiveoclockdallas.com and Jennifer from iliveindallas.com.)

JULY!!!

In July we tried some new things. Some of them worked and some of them, well, didn’t work as well as we may have planned them to. Here are some highlights and an explanation of the successes and the not-so-successes:

• We wrote about “weisure” (It’s a movement. Not a misspelled band name.)
• We angered some Minnesota alums (Which still seems random. Those Minnesota people need to chill out. No pun intended.)
• We wrote the first-ever Fake Doctor’s Note Buyer’s Guide (It still amazes me that there are so many places you can get fake doctor’s notes out there. I can’t believe people actually use these.)
• We held a poll to decide the fate of a broken boombox (This one falls firmly under the FAIL category for us. You guys decided on the fate and, well, we never destroyed the damn boombox. It’s actually still in the trunk of my car so it’s not even like I have a great excuse. We just never did it. But maybe, just maybe, someday we will. My apologies for getting your hopes up, though.)
• We rolled out our first-ever contest (The ITE Giftcard Giveaway was a crazy success. And the person who won lives in Malaysia, which meant that, thanks to this contest, ITE was officially worldwide!)

AUGUST!!!

The blistering heat of the summer couldn’t stop us at this point. We were kicking far too much ass. Check out some highlights from the sweatiest month of the year:

• ITE went to Albuquerque (Albuquerque is REALLY hard to spell.)
• We took on the healthcare debate in an ITE way (“an ITE way” meaning we made fun of the whole thing from a safe distance. Those healthcare people are crazy!)
• We started our big push to get into the SXSW Interactive festival (I’m sure we bogged down your Facebook and Twitter feeds with info on this for about 6 weeks between August and September, but hey, it worked! We’re going!)

SEPTEMBER!!!

September brought with it an insanely fortunate moment for ITE. That moment came in the form of something called a Bell Hed. Check out these highlights:

• rondostar scooped the entire world on the Taco Bell Bell Hedz fiasco (To this day, we still haven’t done anything quite as citizen journalism-ish as this. It was a banner moment for us.)
• We created and reported on cheap boozey drinks (We’re still in the testing process on some of these, so don’t blame us if they don’t taste awesome.)
• Patrick Swayze died (R.I.P., dude!)

OCTOBER!!!

October was a return to normal after the Bell Hed craziness of September. Thankfully “normal” for us was making fun of stuff and cursing a lot. Here are a few bright spots:

• We visited and ate at the State Fair of Texas (So much food was consumed.)
• We took yet another shot at Creed (Those assholes had it coming with their 75-cent tickets.)
• We wrote a not-so-nice post about the sequel to Boondock Saints (And those fans made Creed fans look like boy scouts. They are crazy.)

NOVEMBER!!!

After all of the excitement of the previous months we slowed down a little bit in November. There were still a few highlights though, like:

• breadwinner’s continued fascination with Warren Buffett (She really loves that dude. She also really loves the fact that him and Jimmy Buffett have the same last name and like to sit in similar positions in photos.)
• We started checking back in on our first few shithead trading card subjects (R. Allen Stanford had not had a good time since I wrote my card about him. Not a good time at all.)
• We helped you guys survive Black Friday (And as far as we know, no one died this year. So it worked!)

DECEMBER!!!

The holidays came around and brought with them some awesome news (SXSWFTMFW!!!). This awesome news helped inspire us to get back into the full blogging swing that we had let lapse a little bit the month before. Here are some highlights (and one lowlight) from December:

• WE GOT INTO SXSW!!!!! (That deserves all-caps. It was a landmark moment for ITE. Now we just have to try not to eff it up when we’re down there in March.)
• The ITE Holiday Gift Guide (To me, this one is a lowlight, but only because we quit after 17 days when we initially promised we’d go for the whole 24. It was a classic case of “biting off more than we could chew,” which we would learn from for the future. In other words, you won’t see a daily ITE Holiday Gift Guide in 2010.)
• SurlyZ Got Motivated (He’s a brave, brave man. That’s all I can say.)

JANUARY!!!

Now we’re pretty much caught up, but because I’ve come this far, here are a few highlights from last month:

• We compiled the ultimate list of nicknames for the year 2010 (Because it needed to be done.)
• We helped spread the word about the disaster in Haiti (We can be nice from time to time. Really.)
• We made a podcast to promote our SXSW panel topic (Click that link and check it out. Now.)
• Our banker on the inside told us how to start living like an investment banker (I’ve been ordering my drinks differently ever since.)
• We wrote about the disturbing concept of human bed warmers (This one still haunts me. It’s just so nasty.)

–

And that brings you up to speed. Kinda. I left a ton of great stuff out so if you get a moment just click back a few times on our calendar and look around.

This last year has been a blast, and next year should be even better.

Thanks to all of the writers, contributors, people who send me links about things they think are funny and of course, thanks to the fans. You guys are all awesome.

And now, before I tear up, I’m going to sign off.

WE DID IT! WE TURNED ONE-YEARS OLD!

Tags: ITE turns 1

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 2:23 PM and is filed under Site News & Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.