Mike, a friend and former co-worker pointed me to Go Ghetto. I looked at it and promptly forgot about it.

I should have read Mike’s blog closer because at Lunch 2.0 today, I found out that my friends Holly and (a different) Mike are the instigators of GoGhetto. (What a weird small world we live in.) They even gave me a bumper sticker which I had in my hand for all of 10 seconds. (They were too ghetto to let me keep it, because Mark already had one.)

“Ghetto product shot” by tychay.
Nikon D70, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
f/1.8 at 1/60 second, iso 200, 50mm (75mm)

GoGhetto as web-backlash

It is fitting in many ways that I found out at Lunch 2.0, because there is truly nothing more Ghetto than scumming a free lunch at a Web 2.0 company.

GoGhetto is another confession site, but more directed at confessing being cheap. That’s a nice vertical and since it is built like a blog, it’s keeping with an earlier article I wrote about the success of blogs as CMS. Blogs are now so popular that they have created their own sense of “affordance” for websites.

I guess many can consider, Lunch 2.0 and GoGhetto as Web 2.0 backlash. But that’s okay because when I went to Ning’s Confess app the first confession I saw was “I hate Web 2.0.”

Ghetto tips

Well since GoGhetto is so ghetto that they have magic_quotes() turned on and only allow a 500 character submission, I thought I’d share with you some ghetto tips:

GoGhetto with Costco

Fry’s? You call that ghetto?

Use a Costco membership instead. (Two names can be put on a membership so ghetto one from a friend who has already paid for theirs). Their policy is much better than Fry’s. Just remember to save the receipt and everything else.

Too cheap for Netflix or Blockbuster? Buy a video at Costco, watch it, and return it. One time, I ended up with a Ghetto arbitrage at Costco. Here is how: Costco had this deal where you got $20 if you bought both Battlestar Galactica Season 2.0 and Serenity at the same time. When I got home, I found out that BSG 2.0 is only one half of season two, so I returned it, but they credited me with the full amount, not the full amount less $20.

I’ve seen people buy a garage door opener, use it for three years, and return it when it broke. Same with laser printers. Too bad their return policy doesn’t allow you to “rent” computers this way.

Best Costco ghetto of all time? Come back after the holidays to see all the people returning their Christmas lawn ornaments/lights.

GoGhetto with movies

I kept my student ID on me so I could get the student price at movies. I only mentioned this because I was going to do this with V for Vendetta today, but then I realized that I stopped carrying around my old ID when I started making a decent salary.

GoGhetto at SevenEleven

Get the Super Big Gulp® cup at Seven-Eleven, stuff it full of candy bars, and then top it off with an Icee. When you get to the register, you get only charged for the Slurpee. At least at one time, you could get a few dollars worth of candy for less than a dollar. (I don’t know if this works anymore because I heard Seven-Eleven switched to clear containers for their Slurpees, but I’m sure there is a convenience store around that has the old opaque cups.)

Well those are all the ghetto tips off the top of my head.

Ghetto Photography

In keeping with the Ghetto spirit, the above photograph was a ghetto product shot. I just held the bumper sticker up and set the aperture wide to throw Mark in the background into a pleasing blur.

Oh well, according to Mark, all my photography is apparently Ghetto: