Snark Central, how may we help you? (Was: Math is hard, let's go shopping!)
So, there's this website I visit a lot. And this ad keeps popping up... this guy, supposedly a famous Financial Planner, talking about how people worry how much disk space an iPod has, but that it takes US$30,000 to fill it with music. And how he tells his clients how much more sensible it is to pay about 15 bucks per month and have all the music you want. If you click on the link ("Free software download") you find out more. Much more. For example, how you probably should not use that particular financial planner's services, and possibly an explanation or two on why the country is in the state it is. (Please note: I have nothing against people who bought said player and are happy with it, my beef is on how the ad exploits people in a way that if it's not unethical, it's not ethical either. It's not a question of "it's not wrong to do it", it's a question of "it's not right to do it" and, if you've been around kids, or have ever been a kid, you can understand how you can hook people in a way that they'll not listen to reason. Or math. Yes, they can learn a lesson, but I'm not in favor of "buyer beware" all the time for everything. There are limits.)
The website in question has links you can click to give feedback to the ads in the site. So I decided I'd click it and see what the hey. Here's more or less the interaction we went through (paraphrased, I don't feel like a screenshot is as amusing).
Here's lots of clicky things you can click at to tell us what do you think the ad is:
Me, clicked "uninformative, kinda offensive, annoying"
You mean, totally, you didn't like the ad?
Correct.
Dude! What can we do to make the ad better?
Tell the truth and check the math. Also, make sure the ad and the target audience match? That'd be good too.
Why didn't you like the ad?
Because it makes me feel like they think I'm stupid. Also, that either I can't afford a $5 calculator or that I can't do math.
First off, no one is expected to fill an iPod with songs for a buck each, you are supposed to also have personal files you want to carry around, there are movies that take hundreds of megabytes, if not a gigabyte to store etc -- also, you are not forced to buy all the stuff online, you can load the CDs you had lying around, you can put movies you shot with your own camera in it, there are podcasts for free on the web.
Really, if you fill an MP3 player with 120 GB of songs, how long does it play anyway, 30,000 songs? I have less than 2500 songs on mine (of which only 595 were bought online, the rest are from CDs I had), which is 8.5 GB of space and 6.5 days of continuous play. How many people do need 30,000 songs? Can't they stand a little repetition after a week? Are there people who really need nearly 12-15 weeks of continuous play with them?
Also, if you are renting songs like they'd like me to, my player would be empty as soon as I cancelled the service. Sure, it would take me over 150 years of renting at 15 bucks/month to spend 30 grand... that'd be if they never raised the price per month. And of course, for now they'd be happy to let me "keep 10 songs per month forever", but are they likely to keep doing so in the future? Not to say anything of the fact that it then takes over 200 years to get 30,000 songs... and that it would also cost about US$45,000. And if I wanted to buy stuff from their online store instead, I'd need a lot of math too: they don't tell me how much a song costs in real money, only in "points", each point costs more than a cent and if a song costs 70-something points it ends up costing 98 cents if you truncate or 99 cents if you round. Not all songs cost just 70-something points and not all songs can be "rented", just bought. Which would make filling their MP3 player with 120 GB of songs about 30 grand again. Which they were complaining about being financially inadvisable in the first place!!!
Oh? The free download for the software? Good luck, it only works for one OS platform and it's not the one I had.
Are you likely to forward links of the ad to your friends? Or at least tell them about it?
Maybe I will snark about it on my LJ. Is that good enough for you?
What does the ad make you think of?
That the ad designers think I'm dumb, the people who approved of it don't have any respect for me and that this website that is supposed to talk about fixing problems in a completely different OS/platform know so little about the platform and/or OS that they don't even know that the software advertised here doesn't run on said OS, what kind of help can they be? Also, that maybe there are more Financial Planners like that guy leading unsuspecting people into bankruptcy -- we should avoid hiring his services, thank you for the FYI.
Your e-mail address?
DontYouWish@no.way.com
The website in question has links you can click to give feedback to the ads in the site. So I decided I'd click it and see what the hey. Here's more or less the interaction we went through (paraphrased, I don't feel like a screenshot is as amusing).
Here's lots of clicky things you can click at to tell us what do you think the ad is:
Me, clicked "uninformative, kinda offensive, annoying"
You mean, totally, you didn't like the ad?
Correct.
Dude! What can we do to make the ad better?
Tell the truth and check the math. Also, make sure the ad and the target audience match? That'd be good too.
Why didn't you like the ad?
Because it makes me feel like they think I'm stupid. Also, that either I can't afford a $5 calculator or that I can't do math.
First off, no one is expected to fill an iPod with songs for a buck each, you are supposed to also have personal files you want to carry around, there are movies that take hundreds of megabytes, if not a gigabyte to store etc -- also, you are not forced to buy all the stuff online, you can load the CDs you had lying around, you can put movies you shot with your own camera in it, there are podcasts for free on the web.
Really, if you fill an MP3 player with 120 GB of songs, how long does it play anyway, 30,000 songs? I have less than 2500 songs on mine (of which only 595 were bought online, the rest are from CDs I had), which is 8.5 GB of space and 6.5 days of continuous play. How many people do need 30,000 songs? Can't they stand a little repetition after a week? Are there people who really need nearly 12-15 weeks of continuous play with them?
Also, if you are renting songs like they'd like me to, my player would be empty as soon as I cancelled the service. Sure, it would take me over 150 years of renting at 15 bucks/month to spend 30 grand... that'd be if they never raised the price per month. And of course, for now they'd be happy to let me "keep 10 songs per month forever", but are they likely to keep doing so in the future? Not to say anything of the fact that it then takes over 200 years to get 30,000 songs... and that it would also cost about US$45,000. And if I wanted to buy stuff from their online store instead, I'd need a lot of math too: they don't tell me how much a song costs in real money, only in "points", each point costs more than a cent and if a song costs 70-something points it ends up costing 98 cents if you truncate or 99 cents if you round. Not all songs cost just 70-something points and not all songs can be "rented", just bought. Which would make filling their MP3 player with 120 GB of songs about 30 grand again. Which they were complaining about being financially inadvisable in the first place!!!
Oh? The free download for the software? Good luck, it only works for one OS platform and it's not the one I had.
Are you likely to forward links of the ad to your friends? Or at least tell them about it?
Maybe I will snark about it on my LJ. Is that good enough for you?
What does the ad make you think of?
That the ad designers think I'm dumb, the people who approved of it don't have any respect for me and that this website that is supposed to talk about fixing problems in a completely different OS/platform know so little about the platform and/or OS that they don't even know that the software advertised here doesn't run on said OS, what kind of help can they be? Also, that maybe there are more Financial Planners like that guy leading unsuspecting people into bankruptcy -- we should avoid hiring his services, thank you for the FYI.
Your e-mail address?
DontYouWish@no.way.com