Heather Mallick's column about the public's willingness to sell out to the corporate sector for cheap unfortunately meanders off on a few too many tangents before reaching much of a point. But even if she'd connected with a truly incisive take, snark has nothing on Terence Corcoran - who goes to far as to whine that spam e-mails are "essential in a market economy", and to suggest that any legislation goes too far in regulating the digital equivalent of door-to-door sales.
Which leads to the question: exactly how many people - the marketing industry excepted - actually see the constant intrusion of advertisers as a net social good?
To be clear, there are some genuine reasons for concern about the anti-spam legislation in its present form. But it takes a truly fundamentalist consumerist to suggest that CASL's fundamental flaw is that it might allow people a moment's peace from the ever-expanding reach of the corporate sector.
And indeed, if anybody actually wants to test Corcoran's thesis as to the effect of advertising, surely the more likely conclusion is that we'd rather have less of it blasted at us - in person, on the phone, online and everywhere else - rather than succumbing to a future of an endless series of vacuum salesmen pounding on our doors forever.
[Edit: fixed wording.]
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ReplyDeleteThe bulk of CBC's coverage of Eugenie Bouchard's recent successes focused mostly on the marketing opportunities it affords her. We are allowed no respite from the constant drumbeat of consumerism
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DeleteNow that's sad. I suppose it's easier to apply the common model of "look how (insert activity X here) can make you rich and famous!" than to learn and explain the activity itself, but it certainly sends the message that nothing is worth doing except for the sake of becoming a celebrity.
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