Right, yeah, it's been a few days. Sorry. Mega busy. Mega tired. Last night I actually fell asleep while attempting to blog. It's one of the dangers of owning a laptop. "I'll just go work for a bit before I go to sleep...."
Annoying billboard of the week: for Match.com - it says "8 million possibilities" and it has a cute picture of a busy freeway drawing arrows between cars - presumably to indicate potential mates. Here's my problem with it.... I think they got the "8 million" number from the population of Chicago and surrounds. That's fine. I'll buy that. Six million here, a few more million in suburbs. Whatever.
But...
Aren't the vast majority of mate-seekers only interested in those of the opposite sex? So even at its greatest - aren't there just about 4 million possibilities for me - driving by on the road. And how many of the people in those cars are married and thus... presumably... not open to any possibility of a relationship.
But wait - maybe they're trying to say that 8 million people have signed up for their service, and the number actually has nothing to do with the picture of people driving down a freeway. Ok, I can buy that. But... wouldn't that imply that they have 8 million men signed up to their service? Let's be generous and say they have an equal number of women. Wouldn't that mean they had 16 million people in their database? Isn't that just about the total number of all AOL subscribers - the single largest ISP in the US?
I think any way you try to rationalize it - the billboard is wrong.
Unless of course it's a picture of all 8 million of their subcribers on a freeway driving to a "Singles Convention" and each of their subscribers brought along a single unsubscriber as a passenger.
Bad advertising. Bad. And here I've gone and given it attention, thus perpetuating it and proving its effectiveness. Oh the irony.
Books: retyping, rewriting, rearranging. I suppose this is why I wrote a first draft - so I could completely change it around in rewrites. I hate people who can publish the first draft of their novels. Hate, loathe and abominate them.
Annoying billboard of the week: for Match.com - it says "8 million possibilities" and it has a cute picture of a busy freeway drawing arrows between cars - presumably to indicate potential mates. Here's my problem with it.... I think they got the "8 million" number from the population of Chicago and surrounds. That's fine. I'll buy that. Six million here, a few more million in suburbs. Whatever.
But...
Aren't the vast majority of mate-seekers only interested in those of the opposite sex? So even at its greatest - aren't there just about 4 million possibilities for me - driving by on the road. And how many of the people in those cars are married and thus... presumably... not open to any possibility of a relationship.
But wait - maybe they're trying to say that 8 million people have signed up for their service, and the number actually has nothing to do with the picture of people driving down a freeway. Ok, I can buy that. But... wouldn't that imply that they have 8 million men signed up to their service? Let's be generous and say they have an equal number of women. Wouldn't that mean they had 16 million people in their database? Isn't that just about the total number of all AOL subscribers - the single largest ISP in the US?
I think any way you try to rationalize it - the billboard is wrong.
Unless of course it's a picture of all 8 million of their subcribers on a freeway driving to a "Singles Convention" and each of their subscribers brought along a single unsubscriber as a passenger.
Bad advertising. Bad. And here I've gone and given it attention, thus perpetuating it and proving its effectiveness. Oh the irony.
Books: retyping, rewriting, rearranging. I suppose this is why I wrote a first draft - so I could completely change it around in rewrites. I hate people who can publish the first draft of their novels. Hate, loathe and abominate them.
