Mark's Cafe Moi: The thrill of unsubscribing

Backstory: Once upon a time I had a BlackBerry. I didn’t know any better, so I thought it was the best thing ever. I used it for email, which I rarely got at the time, and the occasional on-the-run blog posting. I kept seeing ads for the iPhone, which, as a natural contrarian, I refused to buy. There was just something herdish about it, so I demurred. Then I saw ads for a new BlackBerry, but it was an exclusive with AT&T. I have Verizon and am not one to jump ship. Plus Verizon’s the only carrier that works really well for me in the New Jersey countryside where we have a house and go on the weekends. I stopped in to the Verizon store just to see when they might be coming out with a version. The answer was “next year” if at all. I’m not a patient man, so I started looking at other devices, and discovered the Droid 2. It was love at first tweet. Considering that I seldom use my cell phone as a phone, the Droid’s internet and applications ability swept me off my fingers. I’ve been devoted ever since. Now . . . I set my Droid to make a little spaceship noise whenever I got a new item, whether a text message or an email. I have a lot of Google alerts coming in so I can stay on top of the news and what’s out there to blog about. I discovered that the incessant chirping was getting on my nerves, and that a lot of it is junk email. Which brings me to all those annoying subscriptions. Every time we provide our email to Office Depot or Staples or Lighting Direct or Amazon, which is essentially every time we order anything online, we end up in their data mine. And data mines are made for data miners. Suddenly I was getting emails about all kinds of things, and it was not only cluttering my various inboxes, but pissing me off. So the last few days I have been unsubscribing. It never seems to end, but it feels wonderful, like washing grime off me in a luxurious shower. Little bugs, that’s how all these subscriptions feel, like tiny little bugs on my legs and now that I’m taking time to pick them off I’m feeling cleaner and freer. I will no longer provide my email unless I absolutely have to, and the first time I get an email from them offering me deals on things I’ll never purchase, I’ll be sure to scroll immediately to the bottom and get rid of them as fast as I got them.]]>