Posts by Sam F
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Perhaps that might have worked yesterday, but today I'm here for the detail. I think it's only fair that we get the detail from Rob on his view, else we're left making assumptions on his behalf.
Fair enough - 'scuse the Friday morning flippancy.
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So tell me Rob, how will detection and enforcement work in your thinking?
In before "don't look at me, it's the tech wonks' job to work that out"...
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Did anyone else think "Jonestown"?
Last night's 3 News had a Cultwatch pundit talking "Waco". I think both associations are too extreme, but this is still scary shit.
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Democrat Congress, unpopular, bumbling idiots or worse, financial world down the toilet...
Heh. There was a great thing on the Daily Show a while back, which summarised goes like this:
Take 10+ years of GOP Congress dominance and 8 years of incompetent GOP president. Add 2 years of Democrat Congress dominance and 2 years of same Republican lame-duck bill-vetoing president. And somehow you then get "Dems suck", and the House Republicans' new slogan: "the change you deserve".
What?
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The problem as fas as I can tell is not the Anguses of this world who are smart enough to see the stereotyping as excessive parody of stereotyping itself. Rather it's the surprisingly large number of people who will reflexively lol at the stereotypes just because of what they are, and only self-justify it as 'poking fun at racism' later (if at all).
As Dave Chappelle found with his 'racial pixies' sketch, ironic racism tends to attract followers of genuine racism even when you do it with the best of intentions. Not an easy thing for comedians to work around.
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None taken.
Just the kind of insincere phrase I've come to expect from your kind... :)
Seriously, no particular personal animus to telemarketers here at least - I just don't see why I should spend my (increasingly precious) time answering questions of no interest to me. On the rare occasions when I have a chance to improve a product/service I'm actually interested in, I'll take the time, but surely it's a waste of both my time and the telemarketer's time to sleepwalk through questions about something I'm not going to purchase.
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More on the subject of unsolicited phonecalls and the public good... I was rung up a while ago by a man callling from Australia, who spent twenty minutes telling me the good news that I was eligible for some excellent travel vouchers for various overseas locations!
I was suspicious from the start but played along, until eventually, of course, they asked me for personal information, at which point I abruptly changed my mind. I'm not giving out my cell number apropos of one phone call. Mr. Friendly promptly got very irate that I'd decided not to go for the deal after twenty minutes. Well, tough shit. You called me and chose to spend that time giving me buddy-buddy crap rather than the information I needed to make a decision, and last time I checked time on the phone didn't oblige me to make a purchase. The guy tried a couple more times to strongarm me back into the purchasing process, I refused, and with a fast "Thanks, have a nice day" he hung up.
I later checked online, and discovered that in general the telemarketing travel voucher industry ranges from a highpoint of "dodgy and likely not very useful" right down to "totally worthless and fraudulent". The public good component? Well, not much I suppose, but at least that was twenty minutes Mr. Friendly didn't get to sign up another two or three suckers.
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Family Health Diary as the prime example of the modern snake oil sales pitch. Find a suitable ache, itch or disfunction and create a pill or potion to cure it. Never mind whether it works or not, slap on a high price and promote the hell out of it.
Wait, how'd I miss this?
The entire swarm of smarmy serialised advertorials masquerading as health/consumer information in the public good.
From Family Health Diary to Zoot Review by way of Brand Power... you've all seen these before. Is any more explanation needed? -
I'm afraid that I am the opposite to Haydn. I generally avoid marketing surveys, or give misleading answers, on the grounds that marketing surveys are only there to facilitate my exploitation as a consumer, and I don't see why I should help people be more efficient at extracting money from me.
I tend towards a more mercenary version of this - I tend to ignore surveys or give ill-considered responses if the survey doesn't give me some kind of recompense. If you're offering a freebie or a discount of some kind, I'd say you've more or less earnt the right to extract information of commercial value from my brain. Otherwise, no guarantee expressed or implied, buddy.
The exception of course is the non-commercial survey for which it's obviously in the public good to give respectable answers, but as Giovanni says, they don't roll around too often.
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Politics is a LARP, at least for a considerable number of people, playing "the Game".