Dead Letter
Sometimes, I get letters from clueless marketing people. (Warning: weight loss link)
As I'm sure you know, one of the dangers of poor nutrition and obesity is an increased risk for Type 2 diabetes.
Sometimes, I delete those letters immediately.
I truly wish people would at least look at even one entry on the blog before sending in spam.
Miracle Drug | Not Necessarily The News
Posted by paul on July 9, 2008
Yeah, I get those kinds of requests, too, and I got so fed up, I even publicized the last letter and included the woman's e-mail and company name. Some people thought that decision was tacky and inappropriate, but in my defense, it's one thing to ask a fat acceptance blog to promote a diet-related product, it's quite another to ask an eating disorders awareness site authored by a recovering anorexic/bulimic to promote your diet-related product. One request even came from a bodybuilding site geared towards men with biceps larger than my torso.
And the strangest part for me is, most marketing folks have to come to my site to collect my email address because the way I have worded it precludes bots from picking it up. I mean, what part of eating disorder do they not quite understand?
I've gotten a few of those emails and just deleted them, tho I have been tempted to email them back and offer to sell them a clue or two.
I rather liked Rachel's post with the email and all in it. I thought it was quite brilliant. It would only have been tacky and inappropriate if it was a private correspondence, but it was a business email and names and addy's for businesses generally aren't private, so as far as I am concerned, if they are stupid enough to solicit FA/SA blogs and ED bogs for weight loss crap, then they deserve all the crap spewed back at them.
"Increased Risk" ~~ the latest most popular buzz phrase **Sigh** I'm fighting it every step of the way through my (so far...) perfectly healthy pregnancy. Everyone on the face of the planet is at some "increased risk" or other but that doesn't mean we have to run around getting all freaked out! There's farrrr too much fear going around!!
"If you judge people, you have no time to love them." ~Mother Teresa
Newsflash - leaving your house increases your risk of getting mugged, knocked down by a car or a million other things. Even getting out of bed there's a 'risk' you could fall down the stairs, burn yourself making tea or whatever. With all this fear flying around you'd be forgiven for not wanting to - but then on the other hand staying there and living a sedentary lifestyle supposedly increases the 'risk' of so-called obesity.
Personally I'm sick to death of 'risk', a back-covering concept invented by lawyers and the over-judicious fear of which is literally sucking all the fun out of life. We all die. Life carries a 100% mortality rate, and we're none of us getting out alive. Few people would advocate complete reckless abandon, but it is impossible, futile, and frankly undesirable to eliminate all risk from day-to-day activity, yet is is on that very path our various societies now seem to find themselves.
"if you think fat people have no self-discipline, consider the fact that they haven’t killed you yet.”" - Miss Conduct, Boston Globe
Since so much of this prevention is couched in monetary terms, I'd only add that this whole prevention language seems to be getting a lot of people rich. I always wonder how much my physician's office is involved in compiling statistics that go to prove that we cost corporations so much money. I agree Richie that your response -- we all die -- is the right one.
I love it when cut and paste goes awry:
LOL! In fact, this might become a front page post.