I have to sacrifice my own personal social media information and that of those that I choose interact with?
What kind of racket is this?
Businesses pretend to want to help spread news and articles of import; to support schools, sports, academics, Universities and the like, but there is a catch.
A rather large, bloodletting catch.
They want you to support them as they “give back” but before they allow you to give your support or share their stories, they ask for personal information and information on others who may have no desire whatsoever to support their cause.
I find this abysmal.
Oh, I’m sure their “people” could come up with a hundred good reasons why I should give up the information they ask, but if they really and truly wanted to help the entities they say they want to help, to share the stories they find so important, they wouldn’t have to resort to blackmail to do it.
That’s what it is.
In the end, anyway.
Blackmail.
I call a spade a spade.
Their policy is “I will allow you to engage our help in supporting causes important to you, share stories that may benefit your peers and friends and all you have to do is let us have access to your personal information and the personal information of people you know”.
The only thing missing is a baseball bat to the back of my knees.
I won’t do it.
I won’t give in.
I refuse to be coerced to hand over what they ask simply because I want to help.
I can write a check that will do no more than clear the bank and implicate no-one other than myself.
Target and NBC are two of the offenders that I have had personal interactions with.
I was really bummed to have to give up NBC’s news app because it is one of the best I’ve come accross. As it stands, there are things I see on there I want to share with my peers … understandable, right? NBC, however, won’t let me share unless I give them access to my facebook profile and friends list.
And Target, a store I used to respect, won’t support the schools they say they will support unless I “tell all”.
They go on and on about supporting schools, but they require a blood payment.
I think not.
I’m not going to play along.
I’m not going to “give up” my own personal information or that of others in order to support anything through big business when I am perfectly capable of doing my part to support it however I can.
Which I have.
Many times.
I don’t have much money, but what I do have, I am happy to give away to help worthy causes.
I don’t need big business, conglomerates and super-store powers who are more interested in trying to trick me into giving them what they want than they are in supporting the entities they pretend to be behind.
They call it tit-for-tat … i call it something else entirely.
I refuse to play their game.
Maybe I am cynical in some ways. I never thought of myself as that way, and now I wonder.
Maybe I am.
Maybe I am the type of person that doesn’t give up everything just because a big name is willing to support the same thing I do.
I have standards and rules that I live by.
They aren’t written in stone, but they are my guidelines.
What these big companies offer is little better than the gang of thugs that offers to “protect” a business and then beats the crap out of the owner if they don’t accept their protection.
I find that reprehensible and if they don’t, they should.
Shame of them.
I won’t be a part of it.
Asking something in payment for giving freely is not, in any shape or form, giving freely.
I hear my drummer calling … I believe I will go march to it.
A kick in the teeth is a kick in the teeth irregardless of the animal.
Seriously?
A Photographer's Heart 