I remember using the newsgroups on a local freenet way back before the Web was available. Every now and then, you'd get some wonk posting a message with a subject line that said, "Important news! Please read!" I'd open the message up, only to find that they were just shilling some sort of product -- commemorative artwork or whatnot.
These messages got to be very irritating, especially when one only had a slow network connection. I actually wrote to one guy and said, "You call that an important announcement? I call it false advertising." Yeah, I was being kinda snippy, and I could have phrased things more tactfully. I guess I was bristling at the implicit manipulation involved in urging people to read an "important" announcement about some trivial matter.
As the years went on, I discovered that many other vendors use the same tactic. We all get envelopes in the mail that are marked "Important!" , right? As far as I'm concerned, if you're going to insist that something is important, it had better be true. Or better yet, tell me what it's about, dangit!
Thursday, May 22, 2008
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