While in a bookstore with my mother, we spied the business section and decided to check out the non-virtual competition that my father faced. Although we saw no texts on social media marketing, we did see some new, crisp books on do-it-yourself accounting. Wanting to show me what it’s like in the big bad world of money management, mom and I sat down to flip through the pages.

Immediately, the page we flipped to contained a business card advertising for a local accountant.  It seemed to defeat the point of the book altogether and I wondered why anyone would do that. Hiring an outsourced accountant can make sense, though.

Then, it occurred to me that some people don’t know how to use the Internet.

So, they resort to using shady advertising tactics that probably don’t get them very far. Much like spam.  This whole situation is a perfect example of real life spam.  In our emails, we have a special box for messages like this: The Spam Box.  Thanks to this wonderful device, it is easy for us to ignore the pleas of the desperate ersatz-guerrilla-marketing purveyors of panacea.  We need never check it and, after a month or two, it all gets deleted. And on television: commercials and/or infomercials: each aimed at getting your attention and doing their best to subtly say, “Hey, you need this! Buy it!”

But, you really can’t blame the people who make up these advertisements.  I mean, if you knew that millions of people sat in front of a plastic, black square for hours at a time, wouldn’t you try to manipulate them?

But out in the big bad world of retail commerce, we non-cyborgs don’t come installed with scanners to tell us which books are a mine pit of obnoxious and pitiful advertising, unless you count my eyes which lit on the nearest trash can on our way out the door.