Choice versus Privacy Invasion

Too many shadows, whispering voices
Faces on posters, too many choices
If, when, why, what?
How much have you got?
Have you got it, do you get it, if so, how often?
And which do you choose--a hard or soft option?
(How much do you need?)

Pet Shop Boys “West End Girls”
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Sounds all too familiar, huh?

It was an apt description, and an apt warning of, the all-consuming 80’s and the yet-to-be 90’s and 2000’s. I fear for the 2010’s, when I imagine advertising and marketing will be plugged into every aspect of our lives—right up to a monitoring toilet seat.

It’s bad enough that tax prep chains and accountants want to sell your financial information for the sake of retirement fund solicitation, and possibly a hefty (for the industry) fee per name sold down the road. Banks and credit card companies are already doing it now. I understand that buying a car means insurance companies will start soliciting you, and vice versa. Buying a home? Prepare for the onslaught of junk mail from Home Depot, Lowe’s, lawn care services, carpet cleaners, roofers, painters, and homeowner’s insurance agencies—oh, and let’s not forget the ads for realtors in all this, even though you just BOUGHT!

We’re to the point where you make one move, and it sets off a cascading marketing blizzard that serves no purpose to the thinking person. Even though the mountain of junk mail sent through the system each day produces little to no results, it yields a tax deduction to the originator in the form of losses and printing/postal expense. Uncle Sam REWARDS them for bugging us!

You know those grocery store cards—those VIP, or so-called “discount” cards? They’re not so much for the discounts as they are for tracking every single thing you buy at that particular store, and guess what happens to that information? Yep, you guessed it—sold down the river again to God knows what marketing and advertising agencies.

Shopping on the web? Using TiVo? You aren’t safe there, either. Everybody’s making money off you but you.

Look for ways to “unplug” yourself from the marketing machine by buying used, soliciting small, local vendors who aren’t likely to sell you down the river, or buying from private parties. Get a post office box or some mail center box--they don’t forward obvious junk mail. Make or grow things yourself, but watch out who you go to for the raw materials—Home Depot, Lowe’s, Joanne Fabrics, Hancock Fabrics, and major garden stores are all hooked into the same racket. Limit your TV viewing, and eliminate your TiVo, the house monitor. If you have a DVR device provided to you by your cable outlet, ditch it—it’s also monitoring you. Use a public computer terminal to confound the online marketing pirates.

Last but not least, limit your visits to search engines (a new development)—Google, the former last bastion of government intrusions, has been court-ordered to hand over certain search information to Homeland Security, so God help you if you or your kid have to write a paper about “terrorism,” “child pornography,” “roadside bombs,” " tyranny," or “nuclear weapons.” All the other search engines have happily rolled over and provided this information, and we don’t know who will get it next—Uncle Sam needs money too!

It’s getting to where we have to live in caves (or create our own caves) just to escape the Great Marketing/Monitoring Machine, so we aren’t absolutely deluged with solicitation of choice. More choices don’t make us happier, don’t make us freer, and don’t make us better than anyone else. Choice usually means one great invention followed by a herd of also-rans.

Remember when all we had to choose from was “yes” and “no?” Now we get to reject a whole bevy of things, sometimes at once, by retreating to our own caves. We should’ve never left them.