Blog Elements

I remember going on vacations with my parents and younger siblings to historical sites–Gettysburg, Bunker Hill, Nauvoo, and others. I would always want to take something with me, like a rock from Gettysburg. I wanted something tangible, substantial, something that would create resonance and connection to the place and its events even when I was gone. My parents would tell me that if everyone took a rock from Gettysburg there would no be no rocks left. Thus, the invention of the souvenir shop: you can take something that feels significant and create connection even though whatever it is you bought was probably made in China. The place is preserved, the economy is stimulated, and you go home happy.

I went to Las Vegas a few weeks ago to see Phantom of the Opera, and even though I’m not a Vegas type of girl (I don’t gamble, drink, or go to “adult entertainment”), when touring I still wanted to bring something back with me. I really didn’t buy anything, besides a bottle of water. But I did bring something back with me: videos. Yes, I know, I could search on YouTube and there are plenty of videos of Las Vegas. And there are movies, like Ocean’s 11, that memorialize it. But just as you want your own rock or your own t-shirt, I wanted my own videos.

First, the Venetian was all decked out for the Chinese New Year, so I had to get a shot of a dragon I saw:

Second, I loved the fountain show at the Bellagio, so I cut together a few of my favorite parts:

Pictures and video are the new thing to take away from a place. We take them, trying to personally capture a location’s essence. Especially in the 18th century, and continuing on today, there were fears that perhaps photography could actually steal a piece of someone’s soul, or at least damage it. It’s an interesting thought, because we do change our experiences of things by mediating them.

Here’s a few books that I’ve enjoyed on the history and theories of photography and film that consider how the camera has changed our lives:

The Reality Effect: Film Culture and the Graphic Imperative by Joel Black
Classic Essays on Photography edited by Alan Trachtenberg (This contains essays from a variety of well-known figures during the 19th and 20th centuries.)
On Photography by Susan Sontag (If something is by Sontag, I know I want to read it. She’s just that good.)
The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contigency, the Archive by Mary Ann Doane
Framing the Victorians: Photography and the Culture of Realism by Jennifer Green-Lewis
The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography, and the Everyday by John Roberts
Transforming Images: How Photography Complicates the Picture by Barbara E Savedoff

In truth, that’s my personally collected bibliography of cool film and photography books. I am officially a geek.

Manipulating People When They Try To Unsubscribe

February 7, 2012/1 Comment/in Commentary/by Katherine Cowley

You know the drill–once upon a time you thought it would be interesting to get a company’s regular (monthly, weekly, or, heaven forbid, daily) emails. Or, more likely, you entered a contest, completed an online quiz, or got a special offer on a purchase and did not read every word of fine print. Sometimes, this turned out to be a good relationship–I don’t mind Amazon’s book recommendations or Winkflash’s photo book sales, for example, and I’ve been getting them for years. But most of the time, at some point you’ve had enough. You’re ready to unsubscribe.

You’ve made your decision. You go into their most recent email, click the unsubscribe button, and then are taken to a special webpage, designed not to help you unsubscribe, but to convince you not to. Here’s a fairly standard message:

Retention is important for companies, and they want you to stay on their email list for as long as possible. This is the standard message to get you to stay: you will lose something by leaving us. We like you, you like us. Please don’t leave. It’s like a needy boyfriend that you never meant to say “yes” to, standing next to your middle school locker.

Other companies are a little more heavy-handed. Let’s give a little background first–I once took a quiz on RealAge to find out, well, my “real age.” I got on their email list, and never actually read a single email. In unsubscribed from them in 2010, and spent 2 years of bliss, enjoying my slightly-less-cluttered inbox. At the beginning of 2012, they re-injected my email into their system, and started me sending emails again. (Note: they are not the only company that recycles their unsubscribed customers, a practice I disagree with. I’ve also had to unsubscribe twice from KOA.)

Here’s the message I got from RealAge when I attempted to unsubscribe (the second time):

Same argument as the first, but heavy-handed and even manipulative. But don’t worry–I held on to my original plan to unsubscribe, clicked the necessary buttons, and (probably) managed to be removed from their email list. Of course, it may take up to 10 days for my request to be processed–a standard caveat. It would have been easier to mark them as spam, and next time I will.

The thing is, they wouldn’t make these arguments to get people to stay unless they worked a healthy percentage of the time.

I’ve also gotten these email when I’m not as connected to my social networks as they’d like me to be–unless you change the settings, Facebook now emails you with what you missed if you don’t log on regularly, and Twitter is rather concerned that I haven’t tweeted since June 30th (I’m not sure whether it was of last year, or the year before). Here’s the email they sent me:

The assumption is that there is something lacking in my life–or if I don’t feel like something is lacking, it’s only because I don’t realize what I’m missing. Each of these companies–RealAge, KOA, Twitter, and many more–believes that they can feel that gap, that I will feel happy and whole only through them. They all have things to offer, and maybe some day I will go back to Twitter or camp at a KOA. I find fulfillment through blogging and through interacting with my friends on Facebook. But if I’m relying on email subscriptions or social networks to make me whole, then something obviously is lacking, something that the Internet can’t solve. Perhaps there’s a big “Unsubscribe from the Web” button–I need it sometimes.