As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I have been revisiting some of my old haunts, and some of my old blogs and even a few Facebook groups.
The thing that amazes me — and to some degree distresses me — is the extent to which virtually everything is little more than a thinly veiled marketing opportunity.
I was wading through comments left on my blog posts, and most of the ones that we're just irrelevant and blatant "link spam" were likely generic copy pasta comments, almost always ending with an embedded link to some utterly irrelevant and scammy web site.
As I sighed and considered this, I wasn't sure whether it was the constant (and inappropriate) marketing than saddened me the most, or the fact that all this marketing is basically for sketchy ventures or outright scams, or maybe for somewhere that will install malware or adware on your tech.
I never thought I would end up saying this, but I am really starting to understand and empathize with some of my friends whom I've considered Luddites because they say they "don't have time for that Internet nonsense."
Somewhat in that spirit, after wading through all those spammy comments, my "response" was to go outside and mow our lawn. Or, rather, whack the tops of the weeds on the area that passes for "lawn." On the plus side, it's the greenest it has ever been in early September, during the 13 years we have lived here.
As I was out there mowing — because doing something unrelated has always been a good way to "shake thoughts loose" — I thought about how I learned about marketing many years ago, and how the essence of successful campaigns centered around knowing what your offer really was, and knowing precisely what sort of person that offer would appeal to.
Which got me to wondering whether the ease with which the Internet allows us to reach people has also served to make people dumber in the way they approach marketing.
Including the fact — evidently — that pretty much everything is now a marketing opportunity, regardless of whether what you're offering is targeted in any way, whatsoever.
I think about the way algorithms pick up my trail around the web and serve me up advertising that's evidently "targeted" to my interests, but still seems to be completely ignorant of whether or not those interests are actually anything related to my spending patterns.
At least the coupons I get from Safeway every week are "intelligent," in the sense that they are based around my actual purchases tracked to my loyalty card.
Evidently, the fact that I have shown an interest in crypto is an indication that I am looking to visit a casino, or gamble online!
I suppose that could actually be society's bias towards crypto manifesting... by putting it in the same socio-demographic category as as playing online slots.
Wow.
The Cryptosphere really must be scraping bottom, in the court of common societal opinion! Or, at least, in marketers' opinions...
Maybe it's just the state of the world that "everything" is so totally dependent on people consuming things, that we must market to them 24/7/365, or the whole system will just crash and burn...
For a brief moment I considered the possibility that I am "blogging wrong" because I'm not using this platform as place to "market" something, with every post I put up.
Meh.
How boring would that be?!?!
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Created at 2024-09-03 23:44 PDT
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