Ingenious. Maddeningly, sickeningly, insidiously ingenious.
Okay, so I've been reading Naomi Klein's 'No Logo' lately and it has re-stirred the anti corporate/commercial outrage. It has been quite interesting reading over her predictions for the future of public action, reaction and discourse - I would come across passages where I thought to myself "oh, I remember when that was going on". Much of what she says is still valid, some eight years down the track. And as one of the generation who was subjected to the marketing 'cool hunters', it resonates.
Every now and then I'm taken by surprise at the latest commercialisation of something I thought was either free or even some vague kind of right. We've been surrounded, indeed harassed by marketing and advertising for quite some time now but it still has the capacity to annoy the fuck out of me. Like the fact that using Google's email services means the bots read over my emails for keywords and display 'targeted' ads in the sidebar. Bottled water - that still gets me. Consultancy, the result of businesses deciding that they don't need to directly employ anybody who knows anything, gets me.
So today I received an email from a travel website. They sponsor the netball association I've been playing with and I did indeed sign up - their site hosts travel blogs and notice boards and has travel offers. I thought I'd see what they were about as they were making a contribution to something to enjoy and, I admit, they were offering the chance to win a camera. I will also be using another sponsor's services to send money back to Australia. Back scratching. Relationship building. Whatever.
So what appalled me? They were offering, for a modest fee, to allow you and your friends to view your blog ad free. If you pay them, they won't put shitty advertising on your website.
Okay, so they host your site for free, they do offer you a service. They are 'allowing' you to exercise your freedom of expression in the space that they have purchased and maintain. And it is not without some self-loathing that I acknowledge the 'commercial realities' of them needing income from somewhere.
But pay us and we'll stop doing what you never asked us to do in the first place? Sadly, the only commercial reality I can affect here is to exercise my 'choice' and click that unsubscribe link. Ooh, the power of the consumer.
