The dam has burst, the gates are open, the atmosphere has been breached — and it is finally time for me to throw up my hands and complain at length about the amount of my life I spend unsubscribing from the cascade of unsolicited marketing emails that falls ineluctably into my inbox through no obvious fault of my own. It’s ceaseless. It’s incessant. It’s interminable. If I were to try to keep up with it in real time, I’d be unable to do anything else. One could not expect a plumber to install a sink while playing in the men’s final at Wimbledon, and one cannot expect me to use my email while being treated to memoranda about every last thing that is happening in the United States. I’ve had enough. Somehow, at some point, the email address I used for work was placed onto a list, and from there, like some promiscuous sci-fi virus, it has made its way into the databases of every two-bit promotional agency in the United States. I get marketing emails from the left and the right. I get marketing emails from the straights and the gays and the somewhere-in-betweens. I get emails about concerts in Seattle and protests in Mississippi and from the American Association of Garden Furniture Inspectors. If a subject exists, I’ve been sent an email about it. It’s enough to make me long for a meteor strike.
Other than the dear faces of my wife and two children, the image with which I am now most intimately familiar in this world is the box that reads, “Reason for Unsubscribing: I never signed up for your emails.” I click this ten, 20, 100 times per day. And, hell, why would I have signed up for your emails? Although I resent the intrusion, I can just about comprehend some plucky little marketing agent thinking, “Well, Charles does write about politics, so it stands to reason that he might be interested in this big political event that fits neatly within his wheelhouse.” But, even then, there surely has to be some limit to that logic? “We sent this to a lot of people” is probably necessary to fulfill a flacking contract, but it cannot be close to sufficient. The purpose of marketing is to sell, influence, or persuade. And most of the emails that I receive have no chance whatsoever of doing so. What, if I may inquire, do the people who press “Send” on these missives expect my reaction to be when I am informed about a local “Buy LGBT” campaign in Rendville, Ore. — 3,000 miles away from where I live? Is there anyone in America — nay, on Earth — who, upon learning that a third-string academic at a college they’ve never heard of is “available for comment about the latest developments in the Hunter Biden case,” has pumped his fist to the sky and said, “Finally, I see the keys to that Pulitzer”? Does the journalist exist who, having been told that Rollerskating4Climate has now branched out into three counties, rushes instantly to the foot of his child’s bed to let the kid know that Daddy will be away for a while on assignment? I cannot conceive of this.
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