The mainstream press distinguishes itself from the blogosphere by touting its reliability; a news story read by a man in a high-priced suit on television, or by a trained speaker over the radio, is supposed to carry more weight than a story put out by some random individual typing away in his bedroom slippers late at night.
Except that I haven't seen any evidence for this when it comes to vetting the advertising I hear on the radio. Even Chicago's premier news stations have oddball advertising. I've heard advertising for homeopathic medications with outlandish claims, and get-rich-quick schemes that I'd toss aside in a moment if they'd arrived by email. Clearly, no one at the radio station spends any time thinking about the quality of advertising they accept. Advertisements that I'd reject as utterly bogus are played time and again.
The latest of these is a series of ads that touts another get-rich-quick scheme: buying and selling Internet domain names. My first reaction when I heard the ad was that the business of buying and selling Florida swamp land has been disaggregated from any real property and moved to the virtual reality of the Internet.
In my opinion, anyone who participates in such a scheme just proves that another minute has passed ("there's a sucker born every minute"); but what I fail to understand is why local radio stations play these ads. Are they oblivious, are they avaricious, or are they just sloppy? It's not just that I think the people who participate in this scheme will, for the most part, lose money; that's Darwin at work and I can even argue that it's a good thing to fleece fools of their money. But I suspect that the Internet will suffer collateral damage as dimwits join the current crop of — shall we say marginally honest? — individuals who use Internet names in a mostly vain attempt to make money fast.
Topics: · security
Link to this story · Comment form · Blog Home
To leave a comment, please fill out this form.Comments are closed for this story.
Trackbacks are closed for this story.
