Fraudulent Adult PR Emails
Friday, June 26th, 2009 -- by Bacchus
As you might imagine, I get dozens of PR emails a week from people who want me to promote their adult sites (usually sex toy sales sites). And most of them I ignore, because they all look the same after enough years in the business.
However, there’s a difference between ignoring a PR effort (which leaves open the possibility that I’ll notice or care about the next, more creative effort) and deleting it with extreme prejudice and a derisive mental annotation. And that’s what you get when your PR is fraudulent on its face.
Latest example: I got an email (actually I got about four of these at different email addresses, so I know it was a marketing blast) that went like this, with my comments in [brackets] and alterations (to protect the guilty from the attention they desire) in {curly brackets}:
Hello, my name is Elizabeth , [note the extra space left as a consequence of the “writer” not filling in the last name on their email-spam-generating software’s template] I’m the admin for www.{site}.com. We’re a female friendly, Canadian source for Adult [ooh! Capitalized so you know it’s good!] toys and information. We’ve just finished posting a new Vibrator Guide [ooh! ooh!] on our site and would love to share it with your viewers.
Herewith a digression, in the nature of Bacchus’s suggested alternative Vibrator Guide: “Batteries go in one end. Other end goes on or near her/your clit. Cheap ones burn out fast. Most won’t survive in the bathtub. Get a rechargeable if you use them a lot. Gold standard for lots of sensation is the Hitachi Magic Wand. Next question?”
I’ll betcha a tube of lube mine is more “female friendly” than the one I got spammed in connection with.
Moving on. The spammy PR email I quoted above is mildly risible, but not, as promised, fraudulent on its face. So, what am I bitching about?
Note that it claims to come from “Elizabeth … the admin” for the promoted site. Guess what email it came from?
{malename} <admin@{site}.com>
As you might imagine, I’ve got some advice for {malename}.
1) It’s possible for a male to publish and market a “female friendly” website. You don’t need a fake Elizabeth as a front-woman.
2) If you do decide to gin up a fake Elizabeth as the public face of your company, you might consider getting “her” her own damned email address. But, you’ll still be a moron, because:
3) In the twenty-first century, a new business venture founded on deception is doomed to failure. The internet slashes through and exposes most lies, and, as people’s bullshit meters grow more sensitive, they learn to avoid obvious bullshit (especially empty commercial bullshit with no point to it or need behind it.)
In fairness to {malename}, I need to point out that “his” name is, technically, gender-ambiguous. But, it still ain’t “Elizabeth” or any variation thereof. So, if “he” is a girl, why create a false Elizabeth? The deception, in this case, solidifies my otherwise-necessarily-tentative gender identification.
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