I use email for important documentation of my affairs. It should be an indexed history of
bills, documents, and communications with various companies, organizations, or people.
Many companies rightfully have a place in my inbox, some of the time, but that line has
been crossed so many times that I have become numb.
Lay eyes on this all-too-familiar scene:
I sit down at my computer.
I check my email.
Most of the emails are advertisements from services I hardly use, or only use in a specific
or limited capacity.
With a vague sense of urgency and deja vu, I open each email, hunt intently
for the light-grey-on-white 8pt font that reads: unsubscribe, which promptly
whisks me away to one of these realities:
1. A Landing page saying that I've been unsubscribed from email notifications.
2. A Landing page asking me to login before I can manage my email notification preferences.
3. A Landing page with a Questionnaire demanding to know why I am leaving.
Notably, these pages display on full the design intentions of their creators:
You've been unsubscribed from the Green Grape Section of the January Editions of Fruit Lover's Magazine. We may accidentally contact you again anytime within the next 30 days.
Companies want to overwhelm me with advertisements so that it is impossible to sort through the noise.
Companies want to plant the engagement seed through variable ratio advertisements, delivered through new and unexpected avenues.
But these heinous actions have a real cost.
There is an inarguable value to the collective actions of the people of this earth. It's incredibly complex - it's nearly impossible to quantify,
and everyone's impact is unique to them, their culture, their way of life. This value is what each of us bring to the table
for everyone else around us. I will not openly make the claim that what I do day-to-day has the kind of far-reaching impact
of Doctors, CEO's, lawyers... (the list continues for quite some length); However, I will make the claim that anyone who has an impact
on those around them are important collectively. We are taking the small steps to push us forward as a species, as a society.
If those impacts can add up over time to shifting cultural norms, revelations, and revolutions... then it follows logically the smallest negative impact
spread across millions of people can have a real detrimental effect. Even the most daring salesman would (hopefully) balk at the idea of pitching
to a surgeon busy in the operating theater.
For many people, including myself, their operating theater is the everyday machine that is so viciously being bent to the will of corporations.
To stand by and not recognize this waste of time is to be complicit in the action itself.
Especially for those of us who may be responsible for implementing or reinforcing such systems.
All of us who see the march on our minds lay helpless, unless there is decisive action in all cases.
This cancer has stricken our society slowly and unrelentingly since the dawn of media.
"Who even uses email anymore," my inner mind cries out in offense of my own collected thoughts.
The reality becomes clear if I step back from my keyboard and breathe in the fresh air of
personal clarity. Everything from notifications to online advertising are subject to the same
thought processes. Even something as ostensibly innocuous as an automatically rolling banner on a website
can be built to change every second, thereby distracting me from my initial intentions like a trained
salesman taking me under their arm to steal my watch. Automatically playing videos on every website, endlessly scrolling
and constantly changing content all assume too much on the user.
The front is moving closer and closer to my phone, my pocket, my everyday, my every moment;
Trampling gladly on the sound of silence to sow the seeds of multi-tiered engagement models.
Real magic does not need to make use of misdirection.
Appeler un chat un chat - We all know what's going on.
We are trading mind-time units for some illusion of convenience, and companies are finding social and psychological
methods to reinforce those microtransaction models.
Companies - Stop. These tactics are irresponsible and inane, and the ethical ramifications will echo through time.
It's time to say Yes instead of No.
I know that my statement alone would not hold up against the billions to be made, but I am obligated to say it
out loud, so that no one can feign ignorance; Even so - ignorantia juris non excusat... Unfortunately
Law evolves too slowly sometimes, while technology grows and adapts to moment-to-moment market needs. Law cannot
hope to properly advocate for a relevant user in a proactive manner, additionally so if the targeted audience
is below voting age. Those who are being subject to the highest levels of technological indoctrination have
the least amount of political control in society. Relying on government to police this correctly is
asking a snail to run a 100 meter sprint; furthermore a great number of people are opposed to the core concept
of business regulation. It's a force that's available and deserves attention, but for this discussion it
is simply not fast enough.
The response has to be user-driven. It's the only type of approach I believe that could keep up. Voting
with my dollar may yeild the changes I want, it may not. There are some small attempts at progress
such as randomized email addresses or adblockers. These effectively allow a user to decapitate one of the
seven heads of the beast, but this is hardly enough. There has to be something proactive rather than reactive that we could enforce.
Personally, I am still trying to find a way forward with technology that doesn't end in ethical compromise.
To hell with blue-suit uniformity, I will not allow thoughtfulness as the measure of a man to be co-opted as marketing material.
In the modern digital age, I think about if I am slave to my habits, chained to technology. I think about what each technology actually gifts me in return for that "negligible" slice of my attention-time each day. Lately, I've been finding that most technology in my life is unable to justify itself even the slightest.