Saturday, May 05, 2012

Bobbi And The Marketdroids

Got another one. This one purports to be a quality-based search engine/listing service for blogs and they sent me a burbly letter with made-up words of either praise or slur (couldn't tell from context) for my little petroglyph-boulder of screeds with plenty of bizzaroid robotic-looking touches tellin' me to sign up now and expect scads, scads, scads of traffic. When I replied with a short note, the first paragraph of which read "No," in its entirety, why, they wrote right back with even more BS and puffery.

Okay, jerk: Get. Lost. You just set your bar to near-infinite height. I'm a big fan of capitalism but by Rand and Barnum, effing content-light salesmanship infuriates me. I'm not buying you, I'm not gonna be signin' up 'cos you are so effing charming or clever, or because I like the color of the product or even that it is a fridge or truck or vacuum cleaner with a leather-upholstered humidor; if I wanted a humidor, I would read up about them on the Web and go buy one. Prolly online.

Just gimme the info and step the hell back. Fine, fine, wear a nice suit; I'd appreciate it if you were well-groomed and if the brochure photographs were nicely-composed and on glossy, heavy paper, but gimme a chance to get good notion of the actual product; let me decide if it does anything I want at a price I'm willing to pay.

Or, shucks, go ahead, work your supersalesmanship on me. Schmooze and emote and prattle all you like.

And lose the sale.
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My little, small-time blog is a little, small-time blog. Years ago, there was a big dustup over big ideas in Comments here and I was chided for choosin' friendship over ideological purity. A guy who should know pointed out this blog would never amount to much.

Well, tough. I'll continue to make the same choice the same way. It's a huge world, filled with people who (IMHHO) mostly have the wrong slant on things, but I can get along with most of 'em and when I am forced to chose, I prefer to stick with folks I know or have general reasons to like over persons with whom I have little in common other than aspects of our political philosophy.

If, as some Deeeeeeeeep Thinkers avow, "everything we do is politics," put me down as a member of the tolerating-your-weirdness-if-you'll-tolerate-mine party. --Or tolerating it as long as you leave off hard-selling me what I don't know that I want and doubt I can use, anyway.
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Update: an excerpt from an e-mail received from another marketdroid this morning:
I think a guest blog post that illuminates the the advancement of our understanding of childhood development would be interesting for your audience. If you're interested, I would love to write something for you and perhaps start a friendly dialogue. What do you think?
I think that would be just peachy -- if you will let me redecorate your bedroom, on your dime, in, oh, "Early Spanish Inquisition." And do up your front garden to match.

This is my blog. I don't do "guest posts." Go getcher own, they're free. Y'know what ain't free? The few eyeballs that look at this blog -- who arrive here not expecting some blather on childhood development from a stranger. "Childhood development?" Not my baliwick. They're little monsters, savages, barbarians. I avoid them. I'm grateful some small fraction of parents (like you!) can rear 'em up so they become civilized but really, until they're like 25, 30, 35, if it was up to me, I wouldn't even bother to name 'em and I don't much care to interact with them unless they are really good at being proper Victorian children: quiet, well-behaved and out of the way, a bit less bother than a cat.

Fates alone know what kinda pre-version these people might actually be huckstering, that they want on my blog to do it. Surely it can't be anything proper or decent.

15 comments:

Tam said...

Is this the "List of the Best ______ on the internets!" guy?

Roberta X said...

I will neither confirm nor deny. Maybe it was a vacuum-cleaner ad. Whatever it is doesn't get a free specific mention from me.

Ed Rasimus said...

My blog is so small and unobtrusive that I don't even attract pitches to make me famous. I'm so insignificant that I've only got one persistent troll. But, I do have a humidor...it's even got a dozen cigars in it from ten years ago when I was forced to give them up. Maybe I should send them to the troll.

Anonymous said...

Until I switched to WP, I never bothered to even look at the trolls.
Now, they are culled daily into my spam filter.
About half as you outline. What they don't get, is I'm not selling anything.
Yes, more and varied traffic feeds my ego, but nothing else.
I'm just glad to see my 'regulars'.
gfa

Roberta X said...

Oh, this is stuff sent to the listed, anti-roboted e-mail address on my sidebar!

--Nothing against humidors, Ed, it was just an attempted example of an attractive, mostly-useless feature. Add one to a desk or a yacht, sure -- but these guys keep trying to fit up my goldfish with Schwinns.

Dave H said...

I wonder if that guest blog post on childhood development would be written by some 24-year-old Vice President of Marketing and Operations. There seem to be a lot of those floating around the net these days.

It's our own fault, you know. Folks work hard and graduate with degrees in Ethnic Studies or Medieval Journalism, then we refuse to give them management jobs and expense accounts.

Drang said...

I get 'em too. Direct to Trash.

Anonymous said...

You go, girl! I come to you and Tam to get the slight off-kilter slant on stuff, and the snark. Happy with the product, thank yew.... JohninMd(help?)

LabRat said...

And yet, your petroglyph rock is invariably among the first three-five clicks on my blogroll when I set out to see what's new on the interwebs today.

Probably for reasons related to why you won't put up with marketdroids. Or "this is a team sport" ideologues.

Cincinnatus said...

They are trying to steal your reputation for the benefit of whatever scam they have going.

Don't listen to any of their nonsense. You are great.

Roberta X said...

Hey, if I can't furnish the inside of my own head to suit myself, what've I got? Nuthin'.

There's my big universal truth for the day.

CGHill said...

I get one of those requests now and then; I like to think that they're utterly gobsmacked when I tell them that not only am I not in need of material, but that if I did, I could write it myself with at least as much panache and a lot less sanctimony.

(Sometimes I quote something else they've written that didn't sit well with me. Google can be your friend, if not your BFF.)

Rip VanBullwinkle said...

Next time tell'em "sure you can guest post on my blog for a fee of $5 per word. Send me your screed, once your check clears I'll post it for you."

Ammo ain't gettin' any cheaper.

John B said...

I do get some locksmith trolls on my Love's Laughing Locksmith blog. No link, I know better! but then my comments section is so sparse, I welcome the odd troll or two for the company. You do know how I feature you in my links right?

Roberta X said...

I did not (I'm really bad about tracking things) but at the very least, you can link to your blog in comments, John B