I just signed up for GreenDimes, a Palo Alto startup company whose sole objective (and business plan) is to reduce junk mail. In return for my $36, they promise to harass the evil people who send me the stuff and get them to stop. They also plant trees.
I find it strangely Kafka-esque (or Mafia-esque) to fork over my credit card number in order not to receive something. On the other hand, if it works, it will be so, so, SOOOO worth it.
Besides, I bet this company was founded due to sheer frustration - and I get a kick out of that. "What do you mean I have to spend my time, energy, and recycling bin space throwing out this stupid stuff I didn't even ask for?! I would SOOO pay someone else to get me off these lists! Hey, wait a minute ... what if ... ? "
Pissed-off-ness is the mother of invention :)
Monday, May 21, 2007
Down with stupid junk mail
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4 comments:
let us know how it goes!
I will. I think it'll take a while to get going - apparently catalog companies pre-print mailing labels a good few months (!) in advance.
Nice to hear from you - I hope everything's going ok with the family!
Hey -- I don't know you but we have a mutual friend cartooniste and I'm a graduate student always looking for ways to shirk my work, hence, I'm reading your blog. I just had to say, in response to this post, that in college, before I started dating the guy I married, I dated the scion of a junk mail fortune. It turns out that one guys in Kentucky, the grandfather of said boy, had invented a way to direct mail market and had made a serious fortune on it. It's nice to know that his grandson, who was made sufficiently wealthy by junk mail to never have to work, was embarrassed by the source of his wealth and only revealed this information to people (women) with which he was involved.
Wow. So we have one guy who got rich off a new industry - and now another guy trying to get rich off of making life harder for the first industry!
That is so weirdly appropriate I hardly know where to start.
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