When Abercrombie & Fitch issued a press release offering money to The Situation and the rest of the cast of the Jersey Shore to stop wearing its clothing, they probably never imagined the joke would be on them.

After yesterday’s brouhaha, stock shares in the company fell nearly 9% and prompted a backlash from stars of the reality show. The Situation tweeted: “Looks like Abercrombie got themself into a Situation!” (Where does he come up with these zingers?) and Pauly D noted the company’s hypocrisy when he tweeted, “Hmmm if They Don’t Want Us To Wear Those Clothes Why Make GTL Shirts” Very Good Point, Pauly D! Why, oh why, would they do such a thing? Oh, for publicity.

MTV has released a statement calling it “a clever PR stunt” and Abercrombie & Fitch’s CEO Mike Jeffries has admitted, “We’re having a lot of fun with it.” Well, you know what they say! There’s no such thing as bad publicity….unless that publicity is causing your shares to plummet. In which case, maybe it is very bad publicity. Maybe the publicity is actually no good at all! Maybe the publicity will cause The Situation to get richer and Abercrombie & Fitch to get poorer and then we all lose, don’t you see?! Ashes to ashes, we all fall down.