The “Attention Mafia”

Have you ever been in a situation where you are bombarded by senseless information and/or unwanted offers? Where your attention is sometimes forcibly wrested from you in order for companies to market to you? Do you ever wonder (as I do) if there’s some underground teamsters union that ensures that these messages reach you? Yes, this smacks again of my rant against advertising, but it’s a slightly different angle.

This is a broad topic, but consider this one example: In every company, there are several teams that each have their own little responsibility. These are the teams who all want to put their stamp on a product. These are the people who all want to be noticed. These are the assholes who insist that a popup appear that says “This program uses authentic Adobe Acrobat® technology. Please click OK to continue.”. Why do I need to know that? I certainly don’t care, and it accomplishes absolutely nothing. Hell, I’ve already bought your product, otherwise I wouldn’t be looking at your stupid pop-up!!!

Why in the hell do these piss-ant design teams and under-employed marketers infiltrate my life with their useless ones?

Another example is the check-out line at a clothing store. You go up there, ready to pay money for their stuff, and they have the gall to say, “Can I get your email address / zip code / whatever?” Now keep in mind, it’s not the employee’s idea, it’s the assholes in the corporate office that don’t know their customer base at all and so they have to gather statistics to see if they are targeting the right audience. Amazing.

And by the way, marketers out there, I always always lie when asked those questions. Go back to business school (after all, you did just get out a couple of months back) and figure out a non-intrusive way to gather that information -- or, you could instead pay me to take an optional survey? Ya ever think of that, numb nuts?

OK I’m done. Blood pressure......slowly......coming......down.

Oh and by the way, I’ll give you 10% off the price of whatever if you sign up for a credit card right now. Ha, that gets ‘em every time.