Back when I used to teach research methods, I often posed the following question about targeting and demographics to my students: Who do you think that the marketing folks think is at home during the day? Answers: women, the angry, undereducated unemployed, students, out of shape people with lots of disposable income....and their pets, seniors, accident victims with an axe to grind.... And so on. The point being that you aren't getting a necessarily representative sample if you, say, make phone calls during the day looking for a good cross-section of society (we'll shelve, for the moment the discussion of whether that list represents a representative cross-section of society...I'm leaning in one direction but that should be obvious).
All of this by way of highlighting the powerfully strange spam I've been getting lately. It makes me wonder whether they even bother to do any targeted marketing at all. Of course, by now they know that I'm of an age where p0rn dominates my thoughts, as indicated by the dozens of ads for "Lezbian Academy!" and "MILF Hunt Continues!" and others that are not safe for prime time viewers that I get routinely in my bulk mail box. But I just got the following: Look Great in a New Powered Wheelchair! From "Cool Wheelchair" (that's Dr. Cool Wheelchair, I believe, but they made it more friendly and colloquial to get me to open it up. Clearly.)
Now I ask you, how does one reconcile the computer geek bulk spam, the pr0n, and the happy friendly wheelchair? And then, I am to believe that at 37 I will look "cool" in such a device? First of all, I am inclined to think (and LK will agree because she loves me) that I don't need a wheelchair to look cool. I'm way cool without one. But more to the point, when you look at the photos they embed in the ad, I'm not really thinking that anyone looks cool in these things. There's little in the way of flashy chrome, or handlebars with neat tassles on them, or anyplace to put your fuzzy dice, and the sound system frankly leaves a bit to be desired. I doubt you could annoy anyone at the traffic light with this thing, unless of course one considers the aggravation factor of a motorized chair going speeds of up to 2 on the open road....
So I'm at a bit of a loss. If there were an easy and essentially free way to accomplish it, I would love to find my name cross-referenced on whatever mailing lists I'm on, with a little description of how I got there.
More spam
In the second class of spam (the first being the inappropriate but Enthusiastic! Offers! For You! As You Requested!) are the re: fwd: RE: mizzpelled xypmior ads fr U to reed...As if they hired a cadre of second graders to type quickly without a dictionary. From this second group came the rather odd existential question: are you tiered? And I thought...why, I clearly am. Aren't we all?? On one level, there's the deep desire to to good in the face of shifting social norms and pressure to succeed at any cost. Layered over that is the deep cynism brought on by media bombardment and the general distrust of elected officials that this engenders. Over that you have to slather the love of cats. So yes, I would have to say I'm rather tiered. And all of this will be helped by some new ephedra-based herbal stimulant. Or so they would have me believe...
ClothMother_old