p.s. Thanks for dealing with my rants today, everyone. I guess that endless Christmas advertising and marketing is already taking its toll on me. Especially since it started before Thanksgiving. @_@
This joyful (not!) image is a glimpse of how hard my Norton has been working lately in corraling my spam. I get that we’re in a down-turned market. I get that people need to make money. I can almost understand when your marketing department gets desperate to bring back their market shares (not that this shows legitimate marketing schemes). But seriously, this is inexcusable. All of these “unbelievable” opportunities that can be yours if you just click on the embedded link which will seek to steal my information, my money, and my well-being. Instead of going after online pirates through misguided and dangerously broad legislations like SOPA and Protect IP, why aren’t our governments going after these frauds who steal a whole lot more than bits of money. Last I checked, the government was still supposed to be working for the people.
I wrote about this before, and have all but given up on most of my comments on this site because they’re so full of spam. The image above is just a few days of email spam, and it’s only getting worse. Everyone deserves to earn money for legitimate business offerings, but this is the part of the internet that makes me disillusioned with a lot of people. Capitalism has mutated into something so insidious, but our government is doing little to stop this from happening:
- The Do Not Call List and Caller ID: Completely ineffective according to NY Times
- Copyright system broken according to Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda
- Sales and marketing of holiday events (and non-stop political campaigning) that extend far beyond legitimate time frames that stress out viewers
- Skewed or misdirected advertising that often stretches the facts on offer: GOP ads talked about on Guardian UK
I’ll stop here because I don’t want to spend the entire day being cranky, or to make you cranky. Thank goodness that there is a lot of inspiration to find elsewhere, or I would lose my head. But I do want to say to you marketers out there to use a little more care when putting together campaigns, and to stop avalanching us with your desperate attempts to take from us. This is supposed to be give-and-take marketing, and not just blatant thievery. A point will come when you won’t be able to do this anymore, because a lot of us (especially me) are getting tired of your tactics. It’s better to work with us, then against us. Ask us what we’re willing to take, and what we’ll give in return. The endless supply of consumers just aren’t there anymore, no matter how much you choose to ignore that fact. The world is changing, and you all need to take responsibility for having pushed that change along. Can we please just work together to fix it???
And thanks to Kaspersky Lab for dropping out of BSA and joining those who oppose the draconian legislation that is SOPA and Protect IP! As well as the European Court of Justice for their recent ruling against piracy filtering. Let’s keep our voices going!!
