Donating to a charitable organization is a feel-good thing. So, when did it stop feeling good? To reward donors, they sell your information to other charitable organizations. You start having to deal with new junk mail coming to your home. Donating to a political organization is even worse. They want to hear from you, so they send you surveys to complete; the problem is that they won’t accept your survey unless you donate again. The bottom line is that they only care about getting money from you.
I really hate to have this attitude, but with the assistance of AI, it has become worse. I think the only solution is to start charging postage on companies that send out over 100 emails per day. With a postage charge, maybe an organization might give up on you faster.
I am most ticked off about those “I was thinking about you” emails. You know the ones, “I was just getting on my private jet and thought that I needed to contact you.” You know the ones who know nothing about you and want to act as your best friend. I don’t have any personal friends who own a private jet. If you have a private jet, you are probably not going to get anything from me but envy.
The trick with spam mail is to have an email program that not only allows you to block individual senders but also gives you the ability to write rules for emails. Junk mail senders are constantly changing the name of who is sending the email, but they always keep the same domain. As such, you can write a rule that sends all your emails from a specific domain to your junk mail folder or to the trash.
The longer they don’t hear from you, the more their AI begins to send bullying emails. If you don’t respond in 2 hours, you are going to get kicked out of the Party. Well, good; will you then stop mailing me? These organizations don’t realize that they are just pushing donors away. Until I can donate anonymously, I’m never donating again. Why am I so sensitive to this? I get around 100 emails a day pestering me. Don’t these AIs have something better to do?
Around Christmas, when you start getting donation requests that include a CD and a handful of blank Christmas Cards, you are only showing me that the money that we send you is going back into donation requests. Is anything left for the cause?
The good news is that our political parties are more alike than we realize. They only want our vote and our money. Maybe with that, they can find some other commonality in Congress.