Mark Carras, the one who just LOST his challenge will be cutting his hair today at 4pm Pacific / 7pm Eastern! He is planning on streaming it so be sure to check it out at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rockmymonkey so be there to check it out.
At 10:38am EST this morning, the 1,000th story became popular. What this means is that Mark Carras, who issued the Heavy as Hell Challenge to get 1,000 stories front paged by October 1st. If that was done, then Mark will shave his head and donate his hair to locks of love, as well as $1,000. Well like you can see, we have 1,002 quality popular stories so guess what, Mark will be cutting off all his hair.
Congratulations everyone. Before and after pictures will be posted as soon as they become available.
Also, keep submitting stories, just because the challenge has been met, doesn’t mean that this site is going anywhere. We want to see Heavy as Hell become a key destination for your social music news!
So Heavy As Hell has been rather busy over the past few days. I was starting to think that our altruistic campaign was going to be a pathetic failure. Then I started talking to Brian Wallace of Now Sourcing about it. Brian couldn’t believe that something so positive was going to fail and had such a low response. So he took it upon himself to help kick things into gear. Well we at HAH bow to the power of Now Sourcing, because HAH then kicked into higher gear than I have ever seen it. We suddenly (and I do mean suddenly) had a massive rush of traffic. Stories buried 20 pages back were hurled to the front page. Within an hour or two we had the front page countdown at least 50 stories.
I thought that Brain was done, but not a chance. Every morning since then (weekends included) story submissions and votes have continued ever since. Please know that I am not talking about Brian alone doing all of this. This guy seems to have an army that has continued to attack with relentless abandon. At the point of this article we only need 176 stories that need to hit the front page with 840 stories that have been submitted total. Can we make the 1,000 stories by Wednesday morning? Time will tell, but before I go into that I want to mention some hellish milestones we have passed during the time Now Sourcing has been helping move this thing ahead.
These are not Photoshopped in any way shape or form other than cropping the specific area important to the point.
666 Stories Submitted
666 Stories Front Page
6-6-6 on Twitter?
Oh yeah, DarkNemesis618 has started an official HAH Twitter account. So sign up if you want to follow him for that. Just go to the main part of the site and click the big Twitter logo.
Now for the question of ‘Will we make it’? We will need to have 58 stories hit the front page a day to make this goal. This works out to 2.9 stories an hour if the site is active 24 hours a day during this time. Of course all of this is a totally rough average because as I am writing this we are 60 hours from the deadline. In fact, from the time I started this article to the time I finish it, the math will change. Plus I really suck at math, so this math is probably way off! However, the point is clear. We still have alot to do if you want to force me to shave my head for LocksOfLove.org after October first. What would be great is if a user other than DarkNemesis618 & myself hit the top of the top ten user chart. So let’s rock this thing!
So let me get this straight right up front. Nothing would make me more happy than to have a user beat the living crap out of me and DarkNemesis618 on the HAH top ten users chart. Please bump us down. All of you need to gang up and bump us both off the chart entirely. In my efforts to encourage you all to make it to the top of the chart, I am going to do my best to give away all my secrets. I hope to get DarkNemesis618 to do the same thing. You users totally need to take control of this place and make it what you want it to be. That is the whole point of the site.
So you do know about Google reader right? That is the most powerful tool when doing social media on any site. The other thing to know is that you should not just keep to music sites. There are many tech sites that do music related stories that would fit perfect in the “Industry News” section. CNN has music stories all the time. In fact whatever your favorite news sites are, I am pretty sure they have tons of musical stories. Don’t close you minds off to just the expected sources. What about a story about a music soundtrack that Trent Reznor did? What about another great band being on The Simpsons? So sometimes movie and tv news is also music news. Just like Tech news can be music news. What if some rock band plays for the Queen of England? World news can be music news too! Every news site and every news source can be a music news source that has great stories that should be posted at this site!
I also want to make it clear that this is NOT A METAL SITE! Notice the rock section? Notice the punk section? I want to see everything from Tom Petty to Cannibal Corpse. I want to see everything from Bob Dylan to Slayer. It would be better if we have everything from Rolling Stones to Six Feet Under. In the words of a legendary rock song, “I want it all, I want it all, and I want it now!”
Now the only other thing I can do is to give you the best music news sources I have on my Google reader currently. Steal them all and add your own, but please I beg you…beat me down on the charts like I was the new M.C. Hammer single!
I’m not sure if anyone noticed, but Heavy as Hell was down for about 15 minutes today while I worked on incorporating a new feature into the site.
On your account page, you will see a new field called “Favorite Bands”. In here you can enter in your favorite bands to let your friends and fellow Heavy as Hell members know what bands you like and listen to the most. Simply enter the bands seperated by commas.
The cool thing is that when someone views your profile, they’ll see your favorite bands and by clicking on any of them, it will take them to a page that shows all articles tagged with that band’s name!
So, go on, update your profile and let us know who you like listening to the most!
All right, you people are still not jumping into HAH as much as we need ya to. So to prove I will do just about anything to get your attention (whore), I am going to make you a very short term deal. Have you checked out the HAH top ten list? DarkNemesis618 and myself have been fighting over the top spot by ourselves and we are starting to find that boring. We want some of you to take it once in a while. Now I know a few of you have tried to con, trick, and taunt me into shaving my infamous sideburns with zero luck. So here is the deal. Can you beat both me and DarkNemesis618 on the HAH top ten users list? When you do you need to send me a message through Twitter so I can see it, but first you have to beat both me and DarkNemesis618 on the HAH top ten chart. Do you have what it takes to defeat the mighty sideburns? Do you feel lucky punk? Well…do ya?
So who is eligible and who is not? Well of course Darknemesis618 isn’t for obvious reasons. I’m not of course. My wife goes under the username “Vapor Rub” and she isn’t either. So no member of the Heavy As Hell team, their family members, or their significant others. Anyone else can bring it on! Friend? Bring it. Online contact? Bring it. Total stranger? Bring it the hell on! Spread the word that we are now truly looking for a fight! Your deadline is 9/9 at 9 pm pacific.
So a month ago I said that if 1,000 stories hit the front page of HeavyAsHell.com I would shave my head for LocksOfLove.org along with a $1,000 donation. Well, you people didn’t make that goal. However, since things did seem to be gaining steam I felt it was wrong to just kill the campaign. So a little more than a week before the original deadline I said that if you could at least make it to 250 front page stories I would extend the deadline of the original challenge to October 1st. Well, you people left that goal in the dust! This tells me that things just keep getting better and this was the right thing to do.
So now you have until October 1st to get 1,000 stories to the front page of HeavyAsHell.com to make me shave my head for LocksOfLove.org along with the $1,000 donation. This is for a great cause that helps some children that are very much in need. A very humble thank you to any media outlets willing to help us get the word out on this. If you find a story about this challenge on the web, please submit the link so we know who our friends are.
For those that have been watching from the start, my wife Sherri did in fact get her hair cut this weekend at the local Fantastic Sam’s in Lacey, WA and will be sending out her locks of love to LocksOfLove.org Monday after work. This is an organization we both really believe in and we thank you for helping us help them in this way.
As always, we will have a current count at the top of the site at all times. So please check back often and help us reach this goal! Remember that the stories can be about rock, metal, punk, industrial, goth, or even just news about the music industry in general (when it effects the styles we cover).
Again I have included a video that I hope is both entertaining and informative about this matter. Use it to help get the word out.
So it’s looking like you people will not make it to 1000 stories on the front page by August 31st. However, things seem to be just starting to heat up here. So I have been talked into a deal of sorts. If you all can make it to 250 front page stories by the original deadline of August 31st 2008, my wife (The QueenOfCheese herself) will donate one foot of her hair to LocksOfLove.org. I however will give you all a one month extension on my original challenge. The date will be moved up one month, but everything else about my original deal remains intact.
What’s that all mean? 250 front page stories (on HeavyAsHell) by Aug 31st gets you the extension. If you make that, you will have until September 30th, 2008 to make me shave my head for LocksOfLove.org. In case you are wondering, the counter doesn’t even restart! That’s right, we are talking cumulative. So 250 front page stories by August 31st and you get until September 30th 2008 to get the front page count to 1000. So that is the new challenge and your last chance to see me bald!
On the serious side though, this is all for a good cause. LocksOfLove.org helps children suffering long-term hair loss from the effects of chemo, or any other medical diagnosis. It costs $1,000 to sponsor a child, so (as with the original challenge) we are still going to throw a one thousand dollar donation on top of my 3-4 feet of hair if you all make the 1000 front page stories goal by the end of September, 2008.
So please do everything you can to spread the word. Use your Twitter accounts, Plurk accounts, MySpace, Facebook, text message, instant message, email, phone, and twisting your little brother’s arm to get the word out on this. Do what you can to bug the hell out of every blogger you know to write about this challenge, too. If they do, submit that story, as well! Don’t have a story to submit? Go into the upcoming section and just vote some up. We have a ton of stories just sitting there. Thanks to everyone who has helped get the word out so far, but we are far from done. Things have only begun.
To you bands, watch this blog because we have a special deal for you we will announce very soon, as well. Free advertising? Details announced soon.
So any second now the first ad campaign of the relaunch will begin. The artwork has already been sent and everything. A very humble thank you to Jason Chieng of Phunkn for doing such a great job on the artwork. Not only that but he did it for free because he thinks this is for a good cause too. So please flood him with paying work and tell him why!
CLICK HERE & HERE to see the two banners we will be using this month.
So what sites will you see these ads on? Blabbermouth.net, Blistering.com, BraveWords.com, HardRadio.com, KillerTours.com, Metaleater.com, Metalorgie.com, MetalReview.com, Metalsdarkside.com, MetalStorm.ee, MetalUnderground.com, Rockdetector.com, RockMyMonkey.com, SMNnews.com, Tartareandesire.com, Theomegaorder.com, Ultimate-Guitar.com, UnrestrainedMag.com, & Zrock.com for starters, but it may end up being double that before we are done.
So why pay for ads so we can do charity work? Because so far you people are not coming close to making me shave my head…wussies!
Mark’s challenge has been in full swing since the launch of Heavy as Hell on the 1st. Currently we have 13 popular stories, 987 short of the stories needed to fulfill his challenge which is definitely for a good cause.
So help both Mark make his challenge and help Locks of Love help kids who are less fortunate than most of us. I would totally shave my head for Locks of Love with only 500 popular stories, but alas my less than 1″ of hair doesn’t do much.
Anywho, post, vote, comment, lets make Heavy as Hell the one stop shop to share links, photos, stories, interviews and videos of the music we all love.
