Ever read Machiavelli?

In college, I had the opportunity to study a lot of liberal arts curriculum. One of the more influential writers I studied was Machiavelli. Did you know he advocated the leader of the state assume the faith of the masses, even if that leader didn't personally have such faith? His theory, which you can see at work in most modern "democracies" was that by appearing to be of the faith, the masses would believe even with evidence to the contrary, that such a leader was bound by the same moral code as they.

Now, what does that have to do with FunAdvice?

Well, Machiavelli also advocated both picking powerful friends - and powerful enemies. With that in mind over the last few years for FunAdvice, we've been cultivating friendships with other companies. Business partnerships, mutually beneficial arrangements, chatting with bloggers (read our news page - some AWESOME people have covered us).

Also, we've been cultivating enemies. One of which, Elle columnist Ask E Jean Carroll from Elle magazine, apparently had some jackass try to "gooblebomb" their site for our brand name. I'll say this clearly:

If you honestly think that your massive drop in traffic is going to be slowed by hijacking the brand name of one of your up & coming competitor's (who, by they way, has a 50% bigger audience, AND we're not falling like you are)...well, if you believe that, E Jean Carole, you're sadly mistaken.

Here's a tip for making friends or enemies that Machiavelli would appreciate: if you cannot beat them, you should not make public enemies of them, as they will retaliate and crush you completely.

Game on, bitches.