If you read the laundry list of asinine behavior I chronicle in Marketing Douchebags, you might think I spend all my free time tracking down assholes.
Actually, they find me.
With rare exception, everything I post to Marketing Douchebags comes to me from one of three channels:
- Someone spams a LinkedIn group of which I’m a member
- I stumble across a spam Twitter account while searching a specific phrase
- I’m the flattered recipient of a spam email
Beyond that, people send me links to people they think are douchebags, and most of them find these links the same way I do.
Bottom line: there’s no shortage of marketing douchebaggery afoot. (The confession of the Mafia Wars CEO, anyone?) And not all of it is online. (Telemarketers, we salute you with a lone extended finger. And when you try to make us feel bad for the poor, struggling call center monkeys on the other end of the line, it only makes me speed up my search for an air horn to aim directly into the receiver.)
But, really, who can blame them? Marketing is hard. No one listens. There’s so much white noise out there that the only thing a talentless hack can do is SHOUT LOUDER AND PRAY THAT SOMEONE NOTICES.
Fortunately, our economy is allegedly collapsing, so the craven among us can convince themselves that douchebag marketing is, like a rickety and rheumatic Obi-Wan Kenobi, our only hope. Since there are no good jobs out there, selling people malware and spamming rubes out of desperation allows social media outlaws to cast themselves as digital descendants of Jesse James. All that’s missing is the public’s admiration of their roguish misdeeds — which, considering those misdeeds are being perpetrated against the public rather than against the corporations who’ve caused these financial problems in the first place, may be a long time coming.
So let’s get this douchebag party train rolling. From here on out, I intend to update Marketing Douchebags on a daily basis. It’s the least I can do to celebrate their tireless striving toward a fishnetted and coked-out version of the American Dream.
Besides, it’s not like there’s a shortage.
Tags: America, bullshit, Business, common sense, ethics, honesty, marketing douchebags, perception, Social Media, Sociology, Twitter
-
Rebecca Thompson
-
Jessica Fenlon
-
Jason Cable
