You’ve got to admit that Google is clever with its advertising.
Somebody sent me this joke in email:
A dying woman told her granddaughter, “Marci, I’m going to leave my farm to you, including the villa, the farmhouse, the tractor and all my other equipment — and over $22 million.”
The surprised Marci, about to become rich, said, “Oh, Granny! You are so generous! I didn’t even know you had a farm.
“Where is it?”
Granny replied, “Facebook!”
So Gmail posted an ad above the email:
New 45hp Tractor $25990 – www.PTBarnum.com.au – 4WD, 4in1 FEL, 6ft slasher, Euro Cabin, 4 Cylinder, 5Years Warranty
Yeah, that’s right: I am in the market for a 26K$ tractor… I live in a unit with a back garden that is no wider than a tractor and not much longer: thanks so much. (SURELY Google should have figured that out from the location reports from my Android phone?????!!, yeah?)
So, this moment, I am reviewing a thank-you note I had sent to my daughter-in-law who has just this week brought my first grandchild into the world, and the ad selected to commemorate the event by Gmail is:
Overstock iPads: $30.93 – www.PTBarnum.com/iPad – Get 32GB Apple iPads for $30.93. Limit One Per Day. Australia Only.
OK, cool — Google must be reading my mind: my Mom wants to buy an iPad. (Just how much do they know about me??)
Now, I have to tell you that an iPad for 30.93$ is a real bargain because legitimate iPads cost 579$ at Big W in Oz. A bit more if you want more memory, which is the only undecided factor holding me back from Gmailing my Mom and saying, “stick it to Bill and Melissa Gates AND DO IT NOW!!”. 
But 30.93$?? Let’s think about this thing a minute, folks. “If it’s too good to be true…” It isn’t true. Right? That’s what P.T.Barnum taught us.
It’s distressing that business people, who run the free world now, it seems, with their ever-so fabulous business acumen, apparently think that anybody out here is this dumb. Distressing; and insulting. [And the internet being what it is, and the level of this business acumen being what it is, I can't help thinking that maybe -- just perhaps -- this is the work of Nigerians...?? (And now *I* am being insulting!)]
So I moved right on, didn’t I; nothing to see here, folks. No, actually I clicked the link to come up in a new tab and then deleted the tab. Coz I know that that click means the advertising company has to pay 0.001¢ to Google for the click. “Do no evil”? Ha ha, try and stop me!
There used to be a movement in the US to save up your junk mail. Wait for a reply-paid offer for a junk credit card or some other stupid offer, then stuff the envelope with the heavy junk and post it back. The benighted advertiser would have to pay for the return according to weight… Ouch.
We, the imputed suckers, often feel helpless, but here are some thoughts:
- Concerted, grass-roots organized action against peddlers represent their worst terror — it doesn’t take so many to leverage a decisive recoil.
- I read an article not so long ago, (op. uncit.), that opined that, in general, when any notion reaches about 10% penetration into society’s collective brain, it tends to transit in hysteresis, to become suddenly more influential. Simplification?: certainly. Simplistic?: probably. Worthless?: no.
- And, finally, this, about turn-of-the-(19th)-century anarchistic thought, expressing the view that a simple change of mental state is called for, (from Benjamin Tucker, an anarchist theorist and translator of Proudhon):
“the state, rather than being a real structure or entity[??], is nothing more than a conception. To destroy the state then, is to remove this conception from the mind of the individual.” Thus, the act of revolution “has nothing whatever to do with the actual overthrow of the existing governmental machinery,” and Proudhon opined that, “a true revolution can only take place as mankind becomes enlightened.” Revolution, to anarchists, was not an imminent reality, even though it may be an inevitable outcome:
The one thing that is certain is that revolution takes place not by a concerted uprising of the masses but through a process of individual social reformation or awakening. Proudhon, like Tucker and the native American anarchists, believed that the function of anarchism is essentially educational… The state will be abolished at the point at which people in general have become convinced of its un-social nature… When enough people resist it to the point of ignoring it altogether, the state will have been destroyed as completely as a scrap of paper is when it is tossed into a roaring fire.
