Thursday, March 15, 2012

Makes me sad

(Could also be titled: "First world problems").

The ratio of spam-comments (people trying to sell stuff, probably the vast majority of it dodgy) to "real" comments (actually made by people who read the blog and have something to say of substance) is running about 15 to 1.

I suppose that's par for the course for blogs, but still. It frustrates me how much of modern life seems to be people wanting to use your time or your platform to sell their stuff. (I had to hang up on a publisher's rep this morning - they were selling "modified" textbooks and make your own coursepack things and I explained I wasn't interested, but the guy just kept going. Reading from a script, most likely - he had an extremely soft voice and a very heavy accent and I just got annoyed and (gently) hung up the phone. I don't mind that people have soft voices and/or accents but if they're trying to sell me something I don't want, I don't want to go to the effort of concentrating to hear and understand them.)

1 comment:

Chris Laning said...

The magic words to say are "Excuse me. Please put me on your Do Not Call list."

According to law they HAVE to put you on the list if you ask them. Most people (if they aren't machines) will stop talking at that point and say "Certainly. Have a nice day."

About one out of a hundred will try to argue with you. I repeat my message and hang up. Over time, my volume of telemarketer calls has dropped to almost nothing.