My Letter Probably Should've Started "Dear Webcock"
Before I write anything else, I should probably start here: I enjoy social media. I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter, I'm on a couple other services that I lurk on. I really enjoy the kind of interaction that it prompts.
Most of the time.
Two years ago, my wife worked for Randstad as a senior interactive agent. She placed smart and talented technical and creative people in business practices all over DC. Which is how she met Chris Abraham. Chris worked for a while for my friend Mike Krempasky at Edelman PR downtown. I, somehow, ended up on a few emails between Mike, Chris and Tiff.
And that's how the descent into banality and annoyance with social media started. See, Chris, like most spammers, hasn't met an email address he didn't want to abuse. And so it started. Facebook invites. Emails about new social services, invitations to connect on just about every podunk social network on the internet.
God how I'd love to be rid of him.
I've tried emailing Chris to get off his list, but I get responses like:
"I have my contacts backed up over 10 online services so they're always filling in the contact records I delete elsewhere so it really isn't that easy."
It doesn't have to be easy! I just don't want email from you! Ever! The CAN-SPAM act says you have to provide an unsubscription method to send commercial email. Since Chris runs a social media practice, and is a citizen of the US, and uses a US ISP to send his drivel, he's required to abide by CAN-SPAM for his social media-related emails. Except he doesn't.
Here's what I sent Chris back in February:
Look, I don't know you, we've never met. I'm not your friend on facebook, I don't follow you on twitter, I'm not even all that sure how you got my email address as the one you used (thrice) isn't one I publish. Why do you think I care what you find valuable? I recognize that organic marketing is the new hotness, but when you don't know the person making the endorsement it actually has the opposite effect. That you saw fit to to turn over my personal contact information (and do it three times.) is infuriating because we've never even met.
Since then, I've gotten no less than a dozen messages from him.
Chris Abraham is a Webcock. Don't hire him. Don't do business with him. He claims to understand how all of this stuff works, but all he seems to know how to do is profligate impersonal networking.
Tell your friends.
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