I was a kid in the 1980s, and my father had a bicycle shop. My father was also a forward-looking, “let’s make a deal” type of guy. Correspondingly, I grew up around stories of my dad doing clever things to sell (slightly) fancier stuff at lower prices. For example, my dad once told me that when he was a teenager, he bought all the bikes from Goodwill so he could mix-and-match parts then sell better bikes. As another example…. Gosh, I just thought of another one. Hmm. The bottom line is that I had the good fortune of growing up with a father who was very dedicated to his trade and continually sought unconventional ways to capture value that he sought to deliver to customers. He wasn’t likely to share all of the aspects with shoppers, but it also wasn’t a secret.
I mention this because I — you guessed it! — read an email that just arrived. It was maybe some sales or crypto thing. Whatever it was, it did that “This is a secret, click to learn more” thing that grates on my nerves. Like — some study will show that a particular tactic is effective at making people feel anxious or something, so for years after that, marketers will seek to exploit that. Dudes — wtf?!
In any case, I read a lot of sales emails, and they seem to share a commonly-used trope: they tell you they have discovered a secret (🥱) that has translated to whatever benefit. They know to avoid legal trouble by asserting that you could do X, but they need to imply it so that you’ll take interest. It’s both cynically manipulative and pathetic. Moreover, some of the people who write this junk actually have interesting content, as well, but I could never recommend it — I can’t imagine suggesting to someone that they trudge through a lot of garbage for a few good morsels. Frankly, that would call into question my judgment. That’s like an own-goal.
I relate all of this because it seems like a series of own-goals, tbh. Like, I get that costs have been rising for many items. Personally, it just makes me not want things. Like, I know that pretty much everything is more expensive than a decade ago. Is that because stuff is broadly better? Helllllll no. Chances are some private equity firm bought the company and is ruining the company and degrading its products as quickly as possible. I’d just as soon not pay for that.
I forget my exact point. I typically write stuff out on my phone notes app but run out of steam sooner or later, so I often leave myself notes for when I return later, but this one had no notes. And the title doesn’t really remind me either. So here we are — floating in space. If I can guess what I was writing about, it was simply that writing really irks me when it insists it has a secret to share, because I think that is a low-quality sales technique. And potential buyers don’t like it. Like, yeah, you can get people addicted to heroin pretty easily, but then you’ll notice all your customers are leaving needles laying out, selling their stuff, and generally falling into disrepair. Like I dunno about you, but that seems like a bad gig to me. Life on this earth is already difficult and complicated. You don’t want to contribute to the difficulty.