Why Snapchat wouldn't do anything for me; more on personalized appeals

I just wanted to make a further note about how I work and communicate.

  

Let me first talk again about “unstored” services like Snapchat.   My own feeling is that I don’t have much use for phone conversation that needs to disappear.  I suppose it is a bit like ordinary phone conversation (which could be recorded).  I won’t send a message or an image that I don’t think is OK to remain in the world permanently.  Curiously, I don’t think I’m engaging enough socially to expect a large number other users to want to share that way with me.  The curious thing is that most of my posts I really indeed to be public, or at least to be kept and retrieved.

   

It’s a good idea to read the company’s blog  for which individual posts are not accessible separately (and that’s odd).  It would be possible for a hostile recipient to snap images onto a separate digital camera, and that could enable the use of the service to transmit child pornography.

I would have a similar feeling about CyberDust, a disappearing text app that Mark Cuban likes.  Lawyers like or dislike these products, depending on their viewpoints, as to how they can affect discovery processes.  

   

“Whats App” could make sense later, if I get into a situation (as in a movie or music project with others) where sending a large number of SMS messages is actually necessary.

  

I’m quite struck by how much of the world operates on hucksterism and recruiting.  I don’t like to see my name put into emails by programs to try to make them personal.  I find it hard to respond to so many special pleas.  My own father was a salesman – a “manufacturer’s agent”, and built his entire living on commissions – and yet in the 1950s he was able to build his entire world around a “real world” social network of manageable size, and keep it with customer service – an idea that seems “gone with the wind” today.  It’s hard for me to believe that I worked in a phone bank myself for over a year a decade ago, and what it’s like now on the other end.

  

I do manage most of my giving through an automated billpay mechanism with a bank, Wells Fargo.  I use Xfinity caller-id to screen landline calls, and will soon start using NoMoRobo.  When I do get a “surprise” call it can be hard to respond appropriately.  I might be on the way out the door, and have to get to an event that I have prepaid on time.   A couple weeks ago, on a Saturday, a got a call from someone in a local church’s “30 Hour Famine” Project.  I actually do know some of the people, but it didn’t seem appropriate to get involved with teens’ personal experience of fasting, not being a parent myself.  I know, this gets loaded – and I was on the way out the door.  I was on the spot.  I had to say No quickly.  But I later went ahead and made a small contribution to World Vision through the Wells Fargo mechanism, and it can be made recurring, and it can give the church credit (although not the individual caller).  

  

The other day I got a mailing from the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, AL.  It was quite elaborate and personalized, and even included a certificate.  It’s odd, because I’ve been to almost every other major city in the state (including Huntsville, where I saw a space camp once), and Tuscaloosa, although long before the tornado).  There is actually a good reason for me to visit the city in the relatively near future, although I won’t get into the reasons now.  But this way of reaching out for donations is a bit over the top.

 

Again, I’m a content-oriented person, not driven by counts or numbers.

Related posts:  March 13, 2011; on drama blog, Feb. 26, 2012.