I get that amateurs don’t think like whores, but…don’t most of y’all put at least some value on your time? Every time I buy anything online or even go anyplace with my cell phone on, I am assailed by requests to provide “feedback”, answer “a few questions” or otherwise provide information for free. Even if each of these requests took only two minutes, I receive dozens of them a week; I’d easily spend 40 hours or more a year doing uncompensated labor for corporations that make more in a day than I will in my entire life. Amazon, Google, Wal-mart, grocery stores, restaurants, even fucking gas stations…the list is endless. Day before yesterday I found in my mailbox a questionnaire from Seattle public transit – a service I only use when it’s cheaper & easier to catch the light rail from downtown or the airport than to find a parking place – asking for my “help”, with no offer of compensation in sight. Hell, at least a few of them offer to enroll me in a drawing for some el cheapo prize that would barely compensate me if I won it on a regular basis (though the odds of finding a hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk are probably greater), but most of them (I’m looking at you, Amazon and Google) don’t even throw out that parsimonious crumb. I imagine many if not most people just ignore these begging leviathans as I do, but enough people must participate to make it worthwhile. Good grief, don’t y’all recognize that the number one commodity in the developed world today is information? It’s bad enough that these immense leeches skulk around behind us online and off, hungrily licking up the data traces we all inadvertently leave behind us as horses leave shit everywhere; do y’all really have to give them information voluntarily as well? Google’s “We need some human help” is probably the most brazen of these, because it overtly acknowledges that it’s dealing with a human, then proceeds to treat that human as a machine from whom “help” (ie, valuable and marketable information) can be extracted merely for the demanding, with no offer of payment. Fuck you, Google, and the same goes for all you other turgid, omnivorous blobs haunting Silicon Valley and Seattle. Cut me in for a percentage of the profit on any data I give you and maybe I’ll consider it, but until then stop sniffing around my crotch and trying to get something for nothing like some gigantic Twitter rando demanding “debate” for free or a titanic time-waster trying to glean wanking material with your creepy questions.
Fuck You, Pay Me
May 30, 2019 by Maggie McNeill
A-men!
I have no idea what the odds actually are for finding a hundred dollar bill on a sidewalk, but it did happen to me last year. That’s how I was able to buy my banjo.
I hear and applaud you. I take pleasure in ignoring or deleting (though even that steals a little time) these requests from giant, intrusive info-sucking corp’s. But i take equal pleasure in answering survey requests from causes i support, if it’s going to help them steer the organization in the right direction.
Sometimes i’ll do surveys from political parties too, when i want to inject some strident feedback into their planning process.
(If this comment results in an avalanche of survey requests, WordPress, i’m going to be pissed!)
The funny thing is that these are useless as actual customer surveys or for any kind of statistics. The only use these have is to better describe you. I am ignoring all of these. It is the only sane thing to do.
SPAM response rates are around 1 in 10’000 and the ones for this type of time-theft are probably a lot higher. It just takes 1 in 100 morons and they will be very much worthwhile for the time-thieves. Everybody else just suffers along as a result.
Exactly. We are already paying for the “free” information with our data all the time.
And these companies have the nerve to shamelessly ask for free work from us to improve their theft.