I’m not much of a mobile gamer, mainly due to the fact that most touchscreen games have terrible controls and that I’d rather game on my desktop instead of my phone. The best mobile games for me have been quick and simple puzzle games that don’t take a long time to load and play. Games you want to play while waiting in line for something or while taking a shit (though I’d much rather read books or reddit these days). In the past, I scratched the itch with games like Hoplite and Pixel Dungeon. Recently I’ve gotten back in 2048. It’s such a fun and simple game. Not a lot of thinking, but satisfying to make progress in. Easy to drop in and out of.
Category: Technology
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Rude Awakenings
This morning I was woken up by a phone call from another telemarketer. This time it was a lady who was trying to sell me an insurance plan by my credit card. Anyway, she started her pitch off the bat. It was a special plan that would pay out a lump sum to me if I was ever diagnosed with cancer, some heart disease or something else (stroke, I think?). I was half awake, I couldn’t remember what she said. Anyway, she was really persistent on the phone despite my continuous negative replies. It got kind of annoying, and I’m not sure if she was annoyed (because I made her explain the whole plan before shutting her down) but it made me glad that I’m not a telemarketer.
But anyway, I was just thinking about the call the marketer made. How much information do they have about us? Or was it just by chance that the covered illnesses were something that I was at risk of (stroke in the family, cancer from me smoking). Also, they must have known that I could afford the insurance plan. I wonder if the list of diseases are different for each person they call. Reminds me of Watch_Dogs, where you can identify people you come across the street and learn about their history and current convictions.
If we all had that ability, I wonder how it would affect our daily lives. I think past criminals wouldn’t stand a chance in society. Then again, they’d probably hack their information to show something else. Which reminds me of the watch list I read about in a Reddit thread. Supposedly, there’s a leaderboard out there with our names and how many points we have for suspicious behavior on the internet. Accumulating a lot of points in a short period of time will probably raise some flags and draw attention to yourself.
Do telemarketers have a similar sort of list of people to call? Targets with higher susceptibility ratings and people to ignore. I’d like to get onto the latter list.
Also, please stop using my email address to sign up for shit. Whoever you are. And no, you’re not going to be able to reset my gmail password or log in from another location because I have 2FA on. Sometimes I wish I signed up for my first gmail account with a different username.
Yes, I still do reply to spam mail. Feel free to send this guy some donations:
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Time Internet Telemarketers
Earlier today I received a call from a Time Internet telemarketer. I’ve no idea how they received my phone number but they knew where I was living. He immediately started his pitch, telling me about faster speeds, lower prices bla bla bla. I told him I wasn’t interested. He asked how much I was paying for my current plan, I told him. He pitched again – cheaper, faster. I told him no. He hung up the phone. The whole interaction reminded me of my job in PR previously – I made a lot of calls to publications, sometimes cold, just to invite them to our events. I also had to call up other people for venue inquiries and bookings. It was probably one of the worst aspects of the job.
I always felt like I was being an annoyance. Personally because I’m not much of a phone person these days (I used to love speaking on the phone as a teenager, not anymore) and it felt so inefficient to me. You spend five to ten minutes on each phone call, with no guarantee of getting a positive answer. Compare that to sending an email or text message which takes less than a minute to send to everyone (after you’ve crafted it, of course) and it’s pretty much the same result. Interested media will reply/RSVP, uninterested ones will ignore it. On the plus side, you haven’t wasted half your day making calls to people who may or may not be in the office or attending another event/meeting. And you didn’t need to be verbally rejected, after all the effort you put in.
I don’t know if the media enjoyed receiving calls from PR people, but I sure as hell don’t enjoy receiving calls from telemarketers. I know these people are only doing their job and I shouldn’t hate them for it, but if there was a less annoying way to sell products to people. Like email or text messages? Hmm. Then again, people probably think that customer interaction is an important aspect of their company/product. I’d like to see the numbers for the success rates of telemarketers. If people are still doing it in 2017, I have a feeling it must be working somehow. If not, companies are just flushing money away hiring people for the job.
Personally, I’m okay with ads even though I use adblockers on my computer mostly because I hate pop ups and any possible malware risks. But the best form of advertising to me has always been recommendations by friends and endorsements by people who I care about i.e. esports players, teams, tournament sponsors, streamers. When I decide what product to purchase, they play a factor in my decisions. However, when it’s an endorsement by someone irrelevant (i,e. movie star or badminton player promoting anti-virus software) I immediately dismiss it. If someone I know has personally used something and recommended it to me, I think that is much more effective.
Like in the case for Time Internet – if my neighbor told me that he switched from Unifi to Time because it was cheaper and he could download Steam games much faster or his Twitch streams were 1080p with no lag, that would have probably pushed me over the edge into signing up for Time. Right now, Unifi works perfectly for me at home so I see no reason in switching. And it’s not something I can easily switch back to if I was unhappy with Time. Also, it would be a hassle setting up my home network again. Also, if more people switched to Time in my condominium, that should free up the congestion on Unifi’s lines and make life better for me, right? kek