Can you read this?
It came this morning in a piece of spam from Inman “news.”
Spam — unsolicited commercial email from vendorslut central.
And: Spam with FUD, InmanStyle: “If you can afford to ignore breaking real estate news and emerging technology trends, then Unsubscribe.”
That’s creepy, sleazy, slimy and repugnant — which is to say it’s marketing as someone from Brad Inman’s epoch understands it. Like all the relics Inman “news” tries to shove down our throats, Bran Inman is a dinosaur — a giant, thrashing reptile incapable of discovering his own irrelevance. Holding someone like him to Web 2.0 standards of behavior is like expecting an actual dinosaur to regulate its own body temperature — it’s more than he can ever do.
But remember that Inman “news” is now allegedly run by people from “our” world.
Do you wish to claim that they don’t know what spam is?
Is it your contention that they don’t know what FUD is?
Evil is doing something you know in advance is wrong. Is there anyone who believes they didn’t know that issuing this treacly piece of spam was morally wrong by standards they understood perfectly well, in advance of their acting?
I’ve been telling you this for a long time, but, sadly, we could not have asked for a more telling example:
When exponents of the vendorslut cesspool — Inman, vendors, the NAR — tell us they want to be a part of our world — what they always mean is that they want to suck us into their sewer of lies.
The things we call surprises almost always result from our failure to pay attention to stone obvious manifestations of reality occurring right before our eyes.
My advice, always: Mind what goes into your mind…
Loretta Holscher says:
Your statement, “The things we call surprises almost always result from our failure to pay attention to stone obvious manifestations of reality occurring right before our eyes.” rang my chimes. I just spoke a rep from the local association and expressed my dissatisfaction at our failure to police our own industry. The no “narc” unwritten rule. I have to wait for the newspaper to tell me some bone head agent threw client personal documents in a dumpster. Why are we so concerned with going electronic without cleaning up our own back yard and making that a priority? More lack of responsibility for the folks that give up their trust.
December 18, 2008 — 2:01 pm
jim canion says:
Tell us what you really think about Brad… I agree with you about Inman in that they have quite a lot of useless
information and seem to support many of the establishment
types that are out to franchise the world and couldn’t care less about the fate of the average agent. That said,
he is just the messinger. I cant help but think about
you having Sherry as a keynote speaker at Orlando. She
is one of Brads favorites and played a big role in the
last several conferences including being given a big role
at the event after launching BH&G last summer. She was a joke in my opinion at Inman but based on comments from Orlando she was:fresh and interesting. Sure…….
I could go on but suffice it to say that throwing stones in this industry may not raise you your status. So much of what you write is so stimulating and interesting it
seems strangely out of place to see such vulgar comments.
PS. My definition of Spam is unsolicited mail. It seems
to me you subscribed to something Inman offers or you would not have received the piece.
December 18, 2008 — 5:44 pm
J Boyer Harding NJ says:
Wow, I guess something set you off. I don’t get Inman’s spam so not quite sure what might have gotten to you.
December 18, 2008 — 6:08 pm
Rancho Carlsbad says:
Now that is calling it the way you see it. I like to see you get all fired up Greg.
December 18, 2008 — 7:16 pm
Sue says:
Well, I guess that really rubbed you the wrong way! I do get Inman as well and never noticed that before. I went back and took a look…yep, its there…
I agree with Loretta’s acknowledgement of your statement regarding ‘surprises’. Additionally, I like these two.
Evil is doing something you know in advance is wrong.
Mind what goes into your mind…
Both really good. Your mind was cranking them out when you wrote this one Greg! 😉
December 18, 2008 — 7:45 pm
Brian Larson says:
Two thoughts:
1. There is some debate about whether dinosaurs were actually warm-blooded.
2. I think you missed the humor in the blurb from the Inman email.
More importantly, I think using the term “evil” for the actions you described trivializes the word. If we use “evil” for this situation, what do we call it when the Taliban throws acid in the faces of girls who attend school because they say that the schooling of girls is ‘unholy’?
But maybe I’m missing the humor in your post, too? 🙂
December 23, 2008 — 12:23 pm
Greg Swann says:
> I think you missed the humor in the blurb from the Inman email.
Missed the alleged humor in a very typical FUD-like appeal, missed the opt-in form for the spamletter in the first place, missed the Cluetrain admission of wrong-doing after the fact. I think I need to get my eyes checked.
> More importantly, I think using the term “evil” for the actions you described trivializes the word.
To the contrary, your resort to outsized but extremely rare atrocities trivializes the actual evil we encounter — and commit — every day in our own real lives.
Evil is taking a purposive action that you know in advance is wrong. That’s a conceptual definition, with the measurement of particular evils omitted to promote abstract understanding. Surely rape — the hysterical resort I hear about most often — is worse than talking behind a friend’s back in Twitter. But the relative severity of one evil, when compared with another — even when speciously compared, as here — does not make the lesser of the two somehow good.
The people who sent me that spamletter:
1. Knew they were spamming and know that spamming is morally wrong.
2. Knew they were playing FUD games with the text I quoted and know that playing FUD games is morally wrong.
3. Know that they have a moral obligation to own up to those two evil acts and make them rights, as much as is causally possible.
These are all facts. The outsized evil of imaginary hobgoblins does nothing to mitigate them.
It is by now plain to all of us — whether we choose to admit it out loud or not — that affiliation with Brad Inman has not made the Inman “news” more honest, but it has made much of the RE.net a good deal more corrupt.
Here’s my take: If you won’t object to small, ordinary evils in your own everyday life, good luck standing up to the likes of the Taliban.
December 23, 2008 — 2:02 pm
Dennis Pease says:
While comparing evils, lets throw a little religion in here to make sense of it. Sin is sin, to God murder is no different than adultery as they are both sins. Both are in the 10 Commandments and they are not suggestions, but Commandments.
So I would agree here with Greg that the degree of evil is not a question. Evil is evil regardless of the degree.
December 23, 2008 — 2:37 pm
Brian Larson says:
At the risk of being flamed…
@Dennis: Well, I can’t say I know God’s mind when it comes to judging comparative sins. I expect if I got even a glimpse of the Creator’s Mind, I’d be reduced to the ashes and dust from which I was formed. What I do know is that human societies have always rated wrongful acts along some kind of continuum; e.g., there were wrongful acts that could cost you your life, and others that might just subject you to shame. From society’s perspective, I think murder is usually worse than adultery.
@Greg: I was not quibbling with you about whether Inman’s actions were wrong (though I think maybe I could). You attacked my comment as a “specious” argument, but what was specious was the argument you constructed based upon it. What I objected to before and still object to is the intensity of your rhetoric.
After all, you have alleged is that (1) Inman sent you a spam message; and (2) a statement in that message plays to folks’ fear, uncertainty, and doubt. You use an idiosyncratic sense of the word “evil” (which I think suffers from being both over- and under-inclusive), which most folks associate with an intense wrongfulness. You accompany it with claims that Inman’s acts are “creepy, sleazy, slimy, and repugnant,” that Inman folks are “exponents of the vendorslut cesspool” trying to draw us into their “sewer of lies.”
I don’t condone spam, and you may have numerous grievances against Inman, but the actions you complained of in your post do not warrant the type of vitriolic rhetoric you used. I object because I think public discourse in the world is becoming dominated by this type of overblown rhetoric. Trivial transgressions become “injustices” and “acts of evil,” and the people who commit them are not guilty of errors of judgment or mistakes but of “evil” and “corruption.”
Use this type of rhetoric against the actions you complained of, and it’s difficult to imagine how you can “turn up the volume” on your rhetoric to address really dreadful wrongs. Note that I wasn’t the only one surprised by the intensity of your remarks, given their subject matter.
Finally, you said: “If you won’t object to small, ordinary evils in your own everyday life, good luck standing up to the likes of the Taliban.” I disagree whole-heartedly. We should all try to IDENTIFY for ourselves the wrongs around us, and the ones that we commit. But I don’t need to OBJECT publicly and harshly about the trivial transgressions of the folks around me in order be able to stand up to the world’s great evils. If I did, I doubt I’d have anyone willing to stand with me.
December 23, 2008 — 9:44 pm
Greg Swann says:
> At the risk of being flamed…
You’re perfectly safe. There is no flaming of either hosts or guests in BloodhoundBlog.
I do want to thank you, though, for being so conscientious a steward of my time.
December 23, 2008 — 10:26 pm
Dennis Pease says:
@Brian, point well taken on my comment and of course I realize society looks at the two differently.
December 23, 2008 — 10:49 pm