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Give ‘Em What They Want
If lust and hate is the candy…
Sometimes I accidentally trigger people to make points with a thousand times more resonance, impact and complexity than I ever could. I don’t know if that means I’m a good writer or a good fisherman, just casting my nets in the right places, and then waiting to see what swims on into it. Earlier today, I wrote a sort of half-baked post on grocery store discount cards, a sort of minor topic, which yielded a true gem in the comments. Reader JD writes, in response to me:
You asked “How do we stem the tide against information intruding into and leaking out of our lives?” By not putting any intrisic value into this information. Refusing to provide information will just cause trouble and get you nowhere. No one cares if the information is correct or not. No one cares about privacy or principles either. Give them what they want, but don’t let them control you.
I understand the underlying sentiment here, but I really have to ask - of everyone, not just JD, as I’m not trying to single him out - is that really possible? Aren’t we letting “them” control us by giving them what they want? In a situation such as that, how are we not letting them control us? And if we refuse to give them what they want and instead go after what we want, does that mean we’re in control? Or does it mean that we’re being, in turn, controlled by our wants?
March 19th, 2006 at 6:47 am
[…] on when we look at the chain of command in a control relationship (as explored somewhat in this post). On one level, we could say that when we control someone else, we […]
March 19th, 2006 at 9:39 am
I think the issue is more how one responds to the fruit of these intrusions.
Grocery stores are just interested in mining the data to figure out how better to market their poison. They are probably also using the data to “test” marketing schemes to see which ones work better for which populations. Personally, I don’t care if they do analyze terabytes of data (and in fact my job involves similar types of analyses). The fact is, I know what I want to eat and when I want to eat it, and no amount of silly marketing is going to change that.
The real trick is knowing yourself and your desires, so that others cannot manipulate you.
March 19th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Oh, right… “Advertising doesn’t affect me.” Don’t you know that *everyone* says that?
March 19th, 2006 at 9:21 pm
He he he. Well, yes and no. Every one of us is a market niche. But some of us exist in smaller niches that are more difficult to reach. I’d like to think I’m in one of those (but I could be totally self-deluded).
March 19th, 2006 at 10:17 pm
I recently had to show my ID at two different gov’t installations: a post office and a federal building. One was for a package that arrived by my “internet” name, since I forgot to change the name for shipping by registered mail. The other was to attend a conference on getting more homeless people to access food stamps (another whole creepy topic, IMHO). Both times, I felt trepidation at handing over my ID…one was because it did not match, and the other, because getting into a Federal building can be intimidating by design. Both times, the functionary never actually LOOKED at my ID… they only looked at my willingness to provide, which was prompt and courteous. Neither questioned me, and one waved me on, the other handed me the package without comment.