Please Stop Giving Discounts to Super Spreaders

"Now is a great time to travel!" countless ads from airlines, hotels, and other travel companies breathlessly advise me from my inbox every morning.

"No it's fucking NOT!" I hiss in reply at my computer screen. Now is NOT a great time to travel. The risk of infection is an elevated danger not just for the traveler but also for all the prudent people they inflict their traveling ways upon. Everyone who plays it safe and smart and only goes out for essential trips is placed at higher risk by each of these super-spreaders gadding through.

"Especially with today's sale of 30%//50%/70% off!" continue the ads.

"Would you PLEASE stop offering discounts to super-spreaders! " I seethe. Sheesh, it's bad enough some people have chosen to bury their heads in the sand against the reality of this pandemic and cannot think outside the envelope of their own gratification anyway. We don't need profit-seekers encouraging antisocial irresponsibility with sales.

Advertarticles. Tahoe Closed.

When something occurs frequently the phenomenon needs a name. This week I realized there needs to be a name for "news" articles that are actually just advertisements. These are the pieces in my news feed, usually several per day, with titles like "Five Unbelievable Deals at Amazon Today!" (someone's flogging their affiliate links) and "Three Secrets of Chik-Fil-A" (a transparent ad for the restaurant chain, and the research for the article consists of quoting two Reddit posts). For these fake, advertising articles I propose the term advertarticle.

ad·ver·tart·ic·le, n: an advertisement, for a product or service from a paying sponsor, purporting to be a news article.

I thought about this again yesterday when I saw an advertarticle from Lonely Planet about how Lake Tahoe is a great place for travel right now in the Coronavirus pandemic. Oh yes, there are multiple levels of stupid in that.

1. The advertarticle was transparently a ploy to drive people to bookings sites for air travel, hotels, and vacation rentals— which Lonely Planet earns referral fees from.
2. Among other things the advertarticle touted was that Lake Tahoe is a great place for summer fun right now. Uh, no it's not! It's December and very much winter right now. Temperatures at water level at Lake Tahoe's 6,224' elevation are around freezing with snow in the forecast almost every day this week.
3. This is not only a terrible time to travel because of the Coronavirus pandemic but especially so in California (3/4 of Lake Tahoe is in California) where state public health rules nominally prohibit leisure travel right now. The advertarticle is not only mindless but irresponsible.

As if to highlight the money-grubbing absurdity of #3, news— actual news— posted later in the day that Lake Tahoe is shutting down to tourists on Friday (San Francisco Chronicle, 9 Dec 2020).

I Know It's a Spam Call When...

This week I read an amusing thread elsenet. The prompt was, "I know it's a spam call when...." My favorite entry was:

I know it's a spam call when...

My phone rings

That got me thinking, yeah, almost every single call I get anymore is a spam call!

Of course, it's not quite as simple as all phone calls = spam. Not for me, anyway. I still get a few calls from actual people I want to talk to.

• My mother calls a few times a year. I don't think she will ever send a text or email. She's barely learned to use an ATM, and I proclaimed ATMs dead several years ago.
• Hawk and I phone each other while we're at work a handful of times a week. Most of the time we text; we call when we need to discuss something that's not efficiently done in text and can't wait until we're home together.
• A handful of times a year my oldest sister calls, or I call her. Again, usually we text. We talk on the phone about once a month to catch up more fully.

...And that's about it!

Note what's not on this list. Work-related calls. That's a little surprising because my cell phone is my work phone. It's the only phone number on my business card (not that I've handed out one of those in nearly a year now!) and the only number in my email signature. But that said, I haven't had a customer call me in... gosh, at least 5 years. Colleagues only call my phone when I ask them to, in lieu of calling me via Slack or using Google Meet or Zoom.

So, because I do receive occasional real calls I do what I think most of us do: I look at the Caller ID. If it's a number my phone recognizes as belonging to someone in my contacts list, I see their name and I answer. Anything else, I silence it and go back to whatever I was doing before.

How do you know when a call is spam?