I’ve recently been going through my Inbox, deleting and unsubscribing from various news feeds. Why?
Because while I like having news delivered to me, I hate it when I get an email from a news organization that contains not news but something that, if followed to its intended conclusion, will involve money leaving my bank account for someone else’s.
The org that triggered this one was either Washington Times or Patriots4Truth (can’t be bothered to look up which, as I nuked both), which initially promised good things but soon degenerated into spam delivery services. The WT actually has sent me some interesting reports, but the spam : content ratio is hopelessly overcome by the former. So: tchuss.
And FFS: if I do subscribe to your feed, and you send me a link to a serious article, could you at least do away with the need to log into your poxy site when I get there? You called me at my email address. (Which is why I seldom read much at the otherwise-decent Epoch Times.)
And by the way, all those people who want to pay me money to publish articles on this website? Fuck off.
In the first place, I don’t do guest posts, ever. In the second, in only a very few instances are the organizations ones that I would even be remotely interested in supporting (by linking to their articles or websites).
A good example was one which said something like, “We LOVE your website, and especially [link to a post about travel] ! We’d love to publish an article which feeds off that post, as we suspect that your readers are pretty much the same as ours! And we’ll pay you $50!”
Right: considering that I equate going on a cruise liner to some Mexican port with being strapped into a dentist’s chair for ten days… I don’t think so, Scooter. And the online casino sites…? Give me strength.
Now, I don’t even bother opening their bullshit letters. I see them in the Inbox, and delete them unread. Then I’ll get a “follow-up” letter which is also ignored. (If a third letter then comes in, I respond with vitriol, foul language and ALLCAPS.)
My email activity is nowhere close to what it used to be in Ye Olde Blogginge Days (around 400-500 emails from Readers daily back then), but it’s still pretty high (thankee for all the kind words, btw, and keep ’em coming because I love to hear from y’all). But I have to delete around a hundred bullshit emails a day, which bugs me only because it takes time to answer the genuine correspondence — which is why it sometimes takes me ages to respond, and why sometimes a letter will fall through the cracks, so to speak, mistakenly deleted and collateral damage in my irritated frenzy of spam deletion. So write away, guys.
All the rest can FOAD.
I’ve never subscribed to anyone’s news feeds. I figure that’s what bookmarks are for. I’ll visit the site and scroll down and read what interests me. And I subscribe to only a few sites to get see what their latest deals are, and I’m thinking about unsubscribing to Classic Firearms because I have to wade through better than a dozen emails a day.
The thing that burns my fuse lately is when I look at a new (to me) site and within seconds I have a pop-up at top or bottom insisting that I acknowledge their cookie policy. Ya, Ya, I know that just about every website out there places a cookie in my browser. Go away. Click. But then the next pop-up happens within seconds, asking me if I want to subscribe to their feeds and get the latest updates. For Fuck’s Sake! I haven’t been able to read a damn thing on the site yet, so I haven’t decided if I even LIKE the site! FOAD! You would think they’d wait until I visited the site a few times before asking me if I want to subscribe (or what’s a cookie for?). But no, let’s annoy you from the start.
Kim, I’ve only commented here on occasion, rather than e-mailing, ’cause I figured you got a lot of e-mail anyway. I’ve been following you since your first blog and missed you when it went away. It was one of my “go to” websites when I wanted to learn something about a particular gun. I only seem to disagree with you when it comes to Food & Drink (I never acquired a taste for gin, sorry) and you seem to like pneumatic women more than I. But de gustibus non disputandum est. Keep up the fine work, thanks.
Thankee for the kind words.
To all of you: do not hesitate to write to me, either with recommendations for post topics, or to ask advice about anything, or just to chew the fat. I’m always happy to get mail from Readers.