24 Nov 2017

Black Friday emails - NOT amateur radio

When I woke up, there were 10 emails in my inbox. All were about Black Friday deals. They made me sick. Every one was immediately deleted.

This is pure commercialism imported from the USA. It is designed to make us spend more over the thanksgiving weekend. Thankfully, this vomit-inducing commercialism is losing favour here in the UK.

If you good folks in the "land of the free" like it, fine. My personal view is I hate it. Thanksgiving is not celebrated here in the UK. In my view Black Friday has no place either.

See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42093624 .
See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42106850 .

3 comments:

  1. Wow, Roger, how are we going to attract the youth to our hobby if in every post you are complaining about something ;-)

    Relax, enjoy the weekend, have a couple of great QSOs, use the unsubscribe button and spam filter to fix the email thing. It also helps to use a "blind" email account for website subscriptions.

    73 Jan DK3LJ


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  2. Jan, I use gmail and the spam filters work well. All the Black Friday ones got ignored, HI. Next year I'll set a rule so that any emails with the words "Black Friday" go directly to the bin. Usually I am a "glass half full" sort of person with a generally positive outlook on life. Perhaps I am turning into a "grumpy old man"! Thanks for your feedback.

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  3. Unless you chose to pay for it Gmail is free. Why is that? Are they purely altruistic?
    No. It's a business. You signed up to giving them license to scan your emails, pictures, data, location and preferences. This is a goldmine of data that helps them with marketing revenue.

    Commercial television such as ITV hand over to advertising such as hundreds of hours for vacuum cleaners. Our television licence doesn't pay for ITV or other commercial stations, other than Channel Four and perhaps Channel 5.

    I remember nationalisation, strikes, black and white television, ham radio kit being unafordable in real terms. I also remember short wave radio stations, crystal sets, direct conversion receivers, a time when BBC radio was much more interesting and less social justice / Guardian oriented.

    When I was at school I was one of very few that had an interest in short wave stations and radio. Very few lay people knew much about it if anything. Software defined radios and wifi seem to generate interest in young technically interested people.

    Things seem to go in cycles and extremes of views eg rampant over commercialism versus communist dictatorships can be like a pendulum swing, hopefully tending to settle at a balanced state.

    Cheers

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