When I was a child, I had friend, Sheila R., who once bit somebody. When her mother found out, she bit Sheila...hard. Left a black-and-blue mark in the shape of her teeth on her seven-year old’s upper arm. It shocked me. Mothers are supposed to set examples, not teach lessons by engaging in the same painful behavior that warranted punishment in the first place.
I had the same reaction when I read Chris "Mr. Long Tail" Anderson's blog item today in which he publishes hundreds of email addresses from "PR people" who supposedly send him emails he has no interest in receiving. What shocked me is that I'm on this list and I'm most decidedly not a PR person.
Poor Chris is simply exhausted from clicking his delete button because PR people are "lazy flacks" who can't be bothered with targeting the right journalist at Wired and instead send their emails to "editor@wired.com"canderson@wiredmag.com. He's also soooo terribly busy that he can't unsubscribe to the emails either. So, he's exacting his revenge by metaphorically biting these folks on the arm. He's exposing them to spam harvesters because "turnabout is fair play."
What Chris doesn't recognize is that everybody, even the lowliest blogger, gets hundreds of unwanted emails per day. It's just that most of us aren't big enough tools to publish everybody's email address so that spambots can capture them.
Too bad Sheila R.'s mother passed away years ago. She and Chris Anderson would have gotten along swimmingly.
Update: One commenter pointed out that I didn't originally read his post carefully and that's right. I was at Boston Logan's airport boarding a flight, reading the post on my cell phone and misquoted the email address that Anderson objects to. This commenter also points out that it's not Anderson's job to "mother" people. Again, that's right. So why is he out to teach PR people a lesson? My point is that he's subjecting people to spam when he himself views PR emails as spam, which is a harsh, cruel "do as I say not as I do" kind of treatment. He's an editor of a widely read publication and is in the wrong business if he's so sensitive about misdirected PR pitches.
Update: Another commenter asks why I was "spamming" Chris Anderson. First off, I wasn't really spamming him in the sense of selling him male enhancement pills or anything. Secondly, the email service I use always allows for recipients to unsubscribe. On top of that, I periodically send out emails asking people to take themselves off my list if they don't want to continue receiving emails. Really, all he had to do is send me an email, or unsubscribe from my emails. He didn't have to try to expose me to thousands of people who will now send me emails about male enhancement pills (I'm already on their lists anyway, but it's the malicious intent behind Anderson's item that really rankles.)
But, as best I can figure, I got his email address because he was on a press list provided by a PR firm that I worked with on an event I hosted. I would have never, ever guessed that a journalist and editor would be so easily knocked off center by unwanted emails, however.
One other option: someone else who works for the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and whose email address begins with "canderson" asked to be included on my email list. I accidentally copied from my Outlook autofill Anderson's email address instead. (I once sent him an email directly and he's in my address book.) But the bottom-line is that I don't know why he received emails from me, but he's clearly not ever going to get another one.
Update: Valleywag has this great item that points out that Anderson's own Wired is a spammer just like Anderson's shameful list of scarlet letter communicators. I knew that I too had received "unsolicited" emails from Wired.com, but like most sane people, I deleted them without a lot of drama and they got lost forever when I shut down Outlook.
Cynthia Brumfield at 6:15 PM|Comments(10)
Three cheers for Tom Foremski (see http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2007/10/chris_andersons.php) who wonders if Chris Anderson has fallen from grace. He writes:
We all receive bad pitches, that's part of our job. We ignore or delete, and then we move on with our day.
However, it remains a puzzling incident. I could understand this if he were a blogger, a novice, unaccustomed to the life of a journalist--and bloggers do get upset about press releases in their e-mail box that have nothing to do with their interests. Mr Anderson is a veteran journalist, ex-Economist, these should be petty annoyances at best--we all deal with them without a second thought.
Posted by: Cynthia Brumfield at October 31, 2007 12:22 PM
Squirrel,
Whether it technically qualifies as spam is beside the point. Nothing justifies the dip-wad act of Anderson, the posting of email addresses of well-intentioned people, partially in the hopes that they would get spammed by not so well-intentioned people.
He's an editor of a major publication (and blog, I might add). Of course hundreds of people are going to send him emails. It goes with the turf.
Real spam is a problem for all of us. Unsolicited emails are a fact of life for everybody in the publishing business. He's not alone -- I get them all the time from earnest folks looking to get exposure for their pet projects, or new products or to invite me to their luncheons or whatever.
I'm just not going to be a jerk about it and publish their email addresses. He could have found another solution, like, oh, posting clear contact information on his blog.
Posted by: Cynthia Brumfield at October 31, 2007 12:07 PM
So you did send him spam?
It doesn't matter if you're "decidedly not a PR person." You send unsolicited e-mail and doing so shows little respect for other people's time.
@Squirrel: "Do the e-mail addresses of people have to be published to get the message across?" Actually, I don't think that will be nearly enough to get the message across! Have the people on this list given up on unsolicited e-mail? I doubt it.
The solution is to STOP sending unsolicited e-mail. (Sketchy "unsubscribe" links are all but useless.)
Posted by: Eric Silva at October 31, 2007 11:54 AM
Unsolicited, bulk email == spam. Let's break it down one part at a time.
Do you send email that is unsolicited? That is, email that the receiver did not request. Just because a receiver's email address is on a list that you buy/rent does not waive his rights to unsolicited mail. I can add your email address to a spammer's list. Does that mean you've given permission for the spammer to send unsolicited email to you?
Do you send email that is bulk in nature? That is, are your email messages generic, impersonal missives that may or may not apply to the receiver?
If you've answered yes to either question, *ding!ding!ding!* you're a spammer -- not of v14gr4 and the like, but still a spammer!
Posted by: Squirrel at October 31, 2007 10:38 AM
Why do people defending Chris not understand that it's not the spam piece that's the problem, it's the vengeance that comes with publishing the e-mail addresses that is ridiculous. It's what some elementary school bully would do. No one likes spam...we get it. Do the e-mail addresses of people have to be published to get the message across? I hope this leads to Chris getting more spam.
Posted by: Kathy at October 31, 2007 3:36 AM
Boy, I had no idea that so many people are eager to slap other people with scarlet letters for relatively minor infractions. Again, I repeat, if Chris Anderson is such a delicate petunia that misdirected emails are enough for him to go on a nasty public witch-hunt, then he should not be in the business he is in. What a baby!
I get dozens of emails every day from political groups, other bloggers I've never met, PR firms, public interest groups and so forth (not to mention Wired magazine, btw, and I don't recall signing up for every conceivable Wired magazine product that I've been pitched on either). And I have nowhere near the resources that Anderson has to solve the problem (he could easily put up clearer instructions on his site about who at wired.com should receive which emails rather than publicly whine about it all.)
But, I merely delete the emails and move on my merry way. Oh, and sometimes I actually read the emails because they have something to say.
As for using the unsubscribe link, can't someone of Anderson's supposed sophistication distinguish between an email from a legitimate source versus an email from a spammer seeking to validate email addresses? Maybe he can't, but virtually everybody else can. When I get an email from the Barack Obama campaign and iit offers an unsubscribe option, I can distinguish that from an unsubscribe option dangled by a get-rich-quick spammer.
Posted by: Cynthia Brumfield at October 31, 2007 12:48 AM
If you're not sending him personalized correspondence or your got his name from a list (not through an opt-in option in which he actually indicated he was interested in your email) it's spam. It doesn't matter if that you're not hocking male enhancement pills. It's unwanted email. Just because it might be easy to subscribe doesn't mean he should have to. He didn't ask for the email and he should be under no obligation to cease its flow.
Besides, as someone who seems to fear spam should know, there's no guarantee that a spammer will use an unsubscribe system that actually honors the request. Spammers have been rumored to use the unsubscribe links simply verify live email address and then spam them more. Unsubscribing is dangerous and shouldn't be used for spam.
If he ended up on your list without opting in, the fault does not lie with him and his public shaming is appropriate. The use of spam makes actual email correspondence much more difficult and is a blight on the internet.
Don't use lists.
Posted by: RD at October 30, 2007 11:36 PM
You sound very righteous, Cynthia, but your analogy is poor. Chris' job is not to mother incompetent PR people, and it doesn't appear that his primary intention is to have them spammed, but to alert them of their presence on the list. (Though if someone sends unsolicited emails, I'd imagine they are familiar with spam.)
Also, you may want to read his blog post more carefully before posting with such passion. His email is NOT editor@wired.com as you stated; he makes it clear that editor@... is in fact the correct address for press releases. It is his personal address (canderson@...)that he is monitoring.
Take another look: http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/10/sorry-pr-people.html
Posted by: Vanessa at October 30, 2007 8:29 PM
Chris Anderson's post is slightly ambiguous, but I think he was saying that he was blocking mail to his direct email address: canderson@wiredmag.com.
He says "I am an actual person, not a team assigned to read press releases ... (that's editor@wired.com)." I take that to mean editor@wired.com is a team for handling PR email. No?
Either way, it would be interesting to hear more from your side of the story. You said that his address was on your list. Which email address? What list? Most importantly, how did his email get onto your list? Was it a confirmed-opt-in subscription?
Posted by: Chuck at October 30, 2007 7:05 PM
Right, but why were you sending him spam? Where did you get his address from?
If you're ok with sending spam, you should be, at least to some degree, ok with receiving spam. If you don't think spam is problematic, then the "punishment" here should be minimal, right?
Posted by: RD at October 30, 2007 6:55 PM
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