Academia
Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 7:43 am
I pride myself on my resistance to advertising. The smugness & superiority I feel towards people who have to buy the latest thing; small folks with no control over their desires, swayed by the opinions of conniving advertisers; is a small vice I don't even try to overcome. But then, like all frail, grasping-for-recognition human psyches, I too almost fell prey.
Virtually every email that actually makes it though my spam filter is flagged as potential spam. I quickly scan the row of yellow warning icons before choosing to delete them all, 100s a week. I can't remember the last time I actually looked at one of them but the emails from “Academia” had great subject lines: “People are looking at your profile,” “4 papers mention Martin Hash,” “81 people have read articles with your name in them!” Each time I read one of those pieces of vanity bait, I swam around the hook a little closer. Finally, one day I was invited to my own personal website, and it smelled so good, I had to bite – Click! I was in, luxuriating in the fawning applause and adulation: they had even chosen a profile picture of me. Martin Hash was somebody! I wanted everyone to know me this way, then I looked to how much it would cost to maintain this level of fame, and I had less than 10 minutes to decide before the whole thing disappeared into nothing. I have to admit, I considered it for a moment, they had found a weakness of existential desire even in me, an appeal to status is the best marketing ploy of all, but I chose just to remain a nobody.
Virtually every email that actually makes it though my spam filter is flagged as potential spam. I quickly scan the row of yellow warning icons before choosing to delete them all, 100s a week. I can't remember the last time I actually looked at one of them but the emails from “Academia” had great subject lines: “People are looking at your profile,” “4 papers mention Martin Hash,” “81 people have read articles with your name in them!” Each time I read one of those pieces of vanity bait, I swam around the hook a little closer. Finally, one day I was invited to my own personal website, and it smelled so good, I had to bite – Click! I was in, luxuriating in the fawning applause and adulation: they had even chosen a profile picture of me. Martin Hash was somebody! I wanted everyone to know me this way, then I looked to how much it would cost to maintain this level of fame, and I had less than 10 minutes to decide before the whole thing disappeared into nothing. I have to admit, I considered it for a moment, they had found a weakness of existential desire even in me, an appeal to status is the best marketing ploy of all, but I chose just to remain a nobody.
