So it appears CNN is selling t-shirts with CNN headlines. Why I have no idea. Are people actually buying them? I wonder.
But what's great is that you can fuck with the URL and generate shirts (complete with the CNN logo) like I Prefer MSNBC or Wolf Blitzer is Hairy or Fire David Payne (senior vice president and general manager of CNN.com).
[hat tip: Jeffrey]
Jerry Richardson
on 21 Apr 08I think they’re do some level of sanity checking on those headlines – trying to add a “customized” headline to your cart throws an error.
GeeIWonder
on 21 Apr 08Hilarious. Great find!
Most of the fun ones will of course involve CNN personalities doing inappropriate things (Lou Dobbs comes to mind)—followed nicely by the ‘I saw it on CNN’ tag.
@Jerry: I got it to work no problem.
Matt
on 21 Apr 08I really wanted to buy one that said “CNN is a cancer of society”. But alas.
Tom
on 21 Apr 08At least 14 people agree with Jerry, altered title shirts cannot be purchased.
I don’t know how “GeelWonder” got it to work unless he’s just trolling.
GeeIWonder
on 21 Apr 08Could screwing with their script be grounds for, well, anything?
Zach
on 21 Apr 08Looks like there’s a checksum hash included in the URL that has to match the headline + secret stuff…
Mike
on 21 Apr 08Too bad it prevents you from buying a T-shirt like that…
Zac Echola
on 21 Apr 08I want one that says “That’s what she iReported.”
Benjy
on 21 Apr 08I want this one...
jake
on 21 Apr 08why customize when you have so many to choose from: http://wtfcnn.blogspot.com/
Joe Mako
on 21 Apr 08This should be combined with http://wtfcnn.blogspot.com.
clayton
on 22 Apr 08I tried creating an MD5 hash of the altered title… the timestamp + the altered title and the altered title + the timestamp… but couldn’t get it to work.
So, who knows what the hash it, but I’m guessing that if you could figure that out you could get the shirt to work.
Wolf
on 22 Apr 08Couldn’t resist:
“Those people…”
Felipe Koch
on 22 Apr 08These guys are smart. Instead of making it impossible to create your own T-Shirts, they allow you to change the headlines with a simple hack, so that you show it to your friends and they get a lot of publicity. But they check it with a hash in case you try to add it to your cart, avoiding actually selling shirts that would damage their image.
jan korbel
on 22 Apr 08The CNN Shirt site is not working right now (5:55am GMT). There is the normal frame but in the content section it says: “An error occured. Please try again later.” The “custom t-shirt” link still work though. CNN is reworking maybe?
Greg Smith
on 22 Apr 08I tried to print this one, but it would not let me.
Bruce
on 22 Apr 08I like this one on the T-shirt: We are liars—CNN
Benjy
on 22 Apr 08CNN’s done a masterful job of creating viral press for this… but at the end of the day, who really wants a t-shirt w/ a news headline on it?
Maybe if it were a Fark headline…
Karl
on 22 Apr 08In the end the fatal flaw in CNN’s t-shirt project is that they are just not that funny :) i doubt they are going to actually print the ones that show up on the WTFCNN blog :) I wrote about this yesterday as well, not sure If I broke it or not: Tcritic – the daily t-shirt blog
@Benjy yeah, this would work much better for the Onion :-)
Rich
on 22 Apr 08Wow, I guess we know where CNN learned its tricks.
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/985-custom-cnn-t-shirts-rails-urls-are-hackable-too-weeeee-time-to-switch-to-django!
greet
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Luis Salazar
on 23 Apr 08Yeap! I saw it and actually liked it… but its a shame programmers still do the same terrific mistakes! We are human beens… we fail… but there are some failures that makes you wonder if this career is for everyone :D
Great blog! fucking lovin it!
Regards from Costa Rica!
insider
on 24 Apr 08Anyone consider the possibility that this ‘hack’ was planned to build buzz? Notice that it was ‘fixed’ exactly 24 hours later? Heh.
This discussion is closed.