We Hope You Enjoyed Reading this Post
Amazon just sent me one of their oh-so-useless-and-far-too-frequent emails, gleefully advertising 40% off a book that I am not interested in, never will be interested in, and bears no resemblance to my past ordering history.
Around one third of the way into the email, where the footer and smallprint start, was this paragraph:
We hope you enjoyed receiving this message. However, if you’d rather not receive future e-mails of this sort from Amazon.co.uk, please opt-out here.
I shudder to think of anyone who actually enjoys receiving these emails: “Oh good, another of those delightfully useful recommendations from Amazon! I’ll certainly enjoy reading this.” Yeah, I just don’t see it.
However, perhaps I am not being literal enough (a rarity for me). It is possible that the message was meant for the mail server, expecting it to take some form of delight in the process of receiving the message and delivering it to me, something like the doors in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? This theory of course requires the belief that Amazon think servers are sentient beings that can take pleasure in directing electronic messages. Who knows? Perhaps Amazon’s servers run around all day having deep meaningful conversations and pondering the intricacies of modern life while directing emails and generating crap recommendations.
For the benefit of any Amazon employee who may pick this up:
- I was indifferent towards the process of receiving the message.
- I did not enjoy reading the message one iota.
- The server did not, to my knowledge, complain about receiving the message, but I doubt it expressed feelings of glee, either.
- Improve your recommendations as they are currently useless.