Doublestandardsville2 June 2003 Trust me, this will be about writing. Eventually. But first, I need to ramble a little about something that just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You hate spam. I hate spam1. But really, is it worth the histrionics it seems to engender in so many online denizens? I see people rant, scream, flecks of foam flinging from their mouths at the very mention of spam. I'm not too fond of it, but I usually just hit the delete key a few times and get on with my life. I know quite a few people that hate spam. With a passion. And yet... Those same people open their snailmail boxes, dig through a pound or so of coupons, pizza flyers, Chinese restaurant menus credit card offers and whatnot, find the two or three pieces of actual mail and dump the rest in the nearest waste receptacle with nary a second thought. So I gotta ask: if we're so complacent with paper junk mail, why the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the online version? There's two ways to look at this. One the one hand, maybe we should be more incensed over paper junk mail. Let's face it, even though paper does biodegrade, the trees aren't really happy about the practice. Given that most of it (98+% of what ends up in my mailbox) never even makes it into the home, it's an incredibly wasteful way to advertise. There's probably nothing we can do about that, though. The people that put these ads out there have decided that it is cost-effective, or they wouldn't be doing it. So you'll keep getting it, just as surely as if your name really is "Resident." On the other hand, if we accept paper junk mail, isn't it a little hypocritical to act as if spammers are demon-spawn that should be burned at the stake at the first opportunity? It's untargeted mass marketing, just like paper junk mail. Why get so worked up over one if not the other? I'll give you another example. Web page ads. Hey, I'm not a fan of these, either. I'm really not a fan of the newer Flash-animated ads that take several seconds to load, even on my broadband connection. But if you really hate ads, you don't have to visit the site that has them. There are a lot of web pages out there. Find one that doesn't have ads and go there instead. When you get down to it, ads, spam, etc. are just someone trying to make a living. Spam is slightly more onerous in that it's untargeted -- you get it whether it's relevant to you or not -- but web site ads are a way for the people that create websites to offset the costs of providing you with the content you go there to read, and yes, just possibly, make a profit for their efforts. In a way, even spam could be considered part of the price of being online. Hermits living in shacks in Montana with no Internet connections get almost no spam at all2. I guess what really concerns me is the "I wanna get something for nothing" attitude so many online denizens seem to have. As I've said before, I work at CompUSA for my day job3. I was showing a couple one of the new iPods the other day and talking up the Apple Music Store, which I think is a Pretty Neat Idea™. I explained that when the Windows version of iTunes comes out on June 23rd, they'd be able to download any song they wanted from all five of the major labels for only a buck. The guy asked me why he'd want to do that if he could get the same songs for free from Kazaa. Oh, I don't know, I said. Maybe because sixty-six cents of that dollar goes straight to the artist, and maybe you'd like to support those that entertain you instead of ripping them off? Well, I didn't say it exactly that way, but I was thinking it. There's no free rides, folks. I hate to break it to, but that's the way it is. You want content. The people that provide the content want food4. If that means they have to put ads on their sites or even sell lists of email addresses to marketers -- hopefully after first getting your permission to do so -- then that's the price of the content you want. You can support them, or do without the content. But you can't get something for nothing. Jeff Kirvin
Jeff Kirvin is available for consulting on mobile technology. Email me today! 1And when I say I hate spam, I'm of course referring to unsolicited junk email, not the fine processed meat product of the Hormel corporation. And it wouldn't do any good to sue me for libel anyway; I'm broke. 2 They probably have plenty of the meat product, though... Yum! By the way, Hormel's lawyers are incredibly good looking. 3I don't make enough money from this site to pay for the site, much less support myself. 4Writing this column is a direct result of my Chipotle habit. I'm writing this in a Chipotle right now as a matter of fact. |