{"id":2639,"date":"2023-03-24T02:00:55","date_gmt":"2023-03-24T10:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=2639"},"modified":"2023-03-23T21:48:00","modified_gmt":"2023-03-24T05:48:00","slug":"never-ending-relationships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2023\/03\/24\/never-ending-relationships\/","title":{"rendered":"Never-ending Relationships"},"content":{"rendered":"

No, I don\u2019t want to register to read your online publication. It\u2019s not just that I don\u2019t want to pay you \u2014 I am willing to pay for publications I read regularly, though I want to be sure something\u2019s worth it before I commit any money \u2014 it\u2019s that I don\u2019t want to set up another account.<\/span><\/p>\n

I want to read news from a variety of sources, but I don\u2019t want to sign up for every individual one, give every one of them access to some data from me \u2014 and no matter how conscientiously I try to eliminate all the data a site collects, I know they\u2019re getting a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n

Likewise, I don\u2019t want to download your app. I don\u2019t need a different app for every publication I read, every company I do business with. Apps are useful for things like the laundry machines in my building or using iNaturalist to figure out what kind of a plant I\u2019m looking at, but they aren\u2019t useful for everything.<\/span><\/p>\n

Browsers work fine for reading publications.<\/span><\/p>\n

I guarantee you that I don\u2019t want to download an app for your hotel that automagically becomes my room key. I mean, I may stay at your hotel again if it\u2019s necessary, but in truth I don\u2019t want to have a relationship with you other than for the nights I\u2019m actually spending there.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When I buy things online, I often do sign up for the email list because they give me a discount. It\u2019s not usually a big discount, but I end up doing it because it seems wrong not to save money. This is a mistake.<\/span><\/p>\n

Email lists are the digital version of loyalty cards at retailers. As a result, I am bombarded with emails from places where I once bought something I needed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t even count the ads I get for products I bought on one occasion.<\/span><\/p>\n

The whole idea is to keep you coming back to that hotel or that store, to make you be a \u201cloyal\u201d customer.<\/span><\/p>\n

I mean, I am actually loyal to businesses that I like. It has nothing to do with loyalty cards or deals. I am very attached to my grocery store, which is not the cheapest store around and has no loyalty program, but which set senior hours at a civilized hour early on in the pandemic, sells quality products, and is easy to shop at.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are several companies I will continue to order clothes from because I like the clothes. It doesn\u2019t matter if they send me offers or not.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I like going to my neighborhood coffee shop. I like a particular bookstore. I like my chocolate shop. I am extremely loyal to the place where we get heirloom flour.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes a place where I\u2019m a regular will give me a freebie, but that\u2019s not why I do business with them. It\u2019s because they actually appreciate my loyalty.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the modern world, once you have any kind of relationship with some place online, you can never get rid of them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is most obvious with political campaigns. Give money to one candidate one time and you\u2019ll never have an empty email inbox.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, this sort of thing was common before the Internet. I get plenty of snail mail from politicians and nonprofits because I once made the mistake of sending them a contribution.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But the emails during the last election were so bad that I didn\u2019t send money to some candidates I supported because I was so offended by getting four or five messages a day from them.<\/span><\/p>\n

I mean, if I once sent you fifty dollars, I\u2019m likely not rich enough to send you another fifty dollars tomorrow and the day after and the day after that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Right now I\u2019m highly irritated because a place where I took an online class three years ago cannot seem to remove me from their email list. I have unsubscribed multiple times. I even wrote an actual person and they assured me my name was off the list, but it wasn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

So no, I\u2019m not going to register to read your site and I\u2019m really not taking out a trial subscription or downloading your app.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to think twice \u2014 or maybe three or four times \u2014 before I enter into any more unending relationships.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, I don\u2019t want to register to read your online publication. It\u2019s not just that I don\u2019t want to pay you \u2014 I am willing to pay for publications I read regularly, though I want to be sure something\u2019s worth it before I commit any money \u2014 it\u2019s that I don\u2019t want to set up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,17],"tags":[683,684],"class_list":["post-2639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-experiences","category-rants","tag-apps","tag-data"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2640,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639\/revisions\/2640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}