Prime Day

I just don't get it. Honestly, I can't justify paying Amazon for a
Prime membership. I just don't buy enough from them to make it
worthwhile. But wow, do they push it. They really want everyone to
buy it. I'm one of those people who resist something the more you try
to push me into it. Like New Coke, or the Mormon church. Or prime.
It's all the same to me.

And I've gone to Amazon today to check out the "deals." All the great
deals seem to be on shit that Amazon needs to clear out. Nothing I
want. Especially an electronic device that listens to everything in
my living room. Come to think of it, I don't even have a living room.
Or a TV. I've looked over the site today at anything I might need.
Nothing. But the clincher was when I decided to look at the items on
my shopping list (my wish items, even though it's not on the wish
list, because those things get deleted after a while -- Amazon
electronically dashing your wishes and hopes). One of the items on my
list was discounted for prime day. Forty cents off. Seriously. So...
no. No echo. No Alexa. No prime for me.

I'm curious, though. You see, I'm a bit of a late-comer to the whole
human race thing. I really never understood people and never tried
until fairly recently. And now, I find human behaviour (of which I
carefully exclude my own) rather interesting. So, I'm curious. What
makes someone go ape-shit over minimal savings on things they want,
or large savings on shit they don't really want? What makes them
think they're really getting a great deal?

I suppose it comes down to that one word I despise more than most
others. Marketing.

My dad was a management consultant. He touted the importance of
marketing to us when we were young. I would say, "It sounds like
you're talking about lying." He'd get angry. No, it's not lying! It's
marketing!

So, after years of his training, I've confirmed. Marketing is lying.
In fact, if you just replace the word "marketing" with "lying,"
you'll find those sentences now ring truer than before. Kind of like
replacing "virtual" with "not." (i.e. "virtual reality" = "not
reality"; "virtually free" = "not free")

And now I have found myself doing SEO for the company websites. In
other words, I'm working in marketing. Lying. I get paid for it, and
worse, our company sells through... Amazon. I have become my own
worst enemy.

Happy Prime Day.