This is how it works now. You buy something, you blithely surrender your email address to facilitate the sending of an eco-friendly e-receipt and, low and behold, you start receiving emails from the company with a fervour and frequency that would embarrass Baby Reindeer. I appreciate that I could block these missives and otherwise treat them as the spam they most certainly are, but they invariably dangle the promise that some astounding offer is just around the corner… if only you keep receiving their emails.
If I were to describe these correspondences in a word, that word would be ‘needy’. They never ask how I am or how my day was. They only want to talk about themselves. It’s incredibly narcissistic and shallow. Granted, they may say the same for me, given that all I wanted was to buy something and then move on with my life unencumbered, but I prefer to think of myself as a traditionalist rather than selfish.
The one thing these emails are not is humble. In fact, these communiques go out of their way to be memorable. Grandiose, even. If Mohammed Ali wrote marketing emails, they would be nothing compared to some of the messages I receive in my inbox.
Some time ago, we bought a musical instrument from overseas. In December, I received an email from the retailer that saw fit to describe a CD featuring the Irish tin whistle as ‘the hottest item this Christmas’. This struck me as unlikely. I, for one, cannot imagine a world in which kids toss aside their Play stations and Gameboys because someone just gifted them a compact disc chock full of tin whistle. The idea of little tykes everywhere running up to their parents and breathlessly begging for a tin whistle CD is some considerable distance beyond ludicrous.
For starters, upon hearing the news of an Irish tin whistle CD, most kids would begin saying ‘what’s a CD?’ After this was explained to them, and having broken to them the somewhat discomforting news that, once upon a time, people paid for music, they’d invariably follow up with: ‘what’s a tin whistle?’ And whilst there’s nothing wrong with these questions, as such, and they may well denote a curious mind, they weigh against the possibility that such an artefact would ever be ‘the hottest thing this Christmas’.
The email went on, with a list of testimonials that proclaimed in glorious prose the power of the recording. Two things were striking – the sheer breathlessness of their praise as fawning words of adulation vaulted over their tongues (or, as the case may be, through their fingers to the keyboard below). I very much doubt that Penicillin provoked reviews that raved as much as these did. These were the kind of testimonials that were so glowing in nature as to render lightbulbs redundant.
Part of me was sceptical. The other part was disappointed that I was unable to muster up this level of enthusiasm for anything, much less a compact disc of tin whistle. What was wrong with me? Had I become so deadened to the majesty of God’s creation that I was condemned to stumble through life with barely a pulse and a dead-eyed stare? Probably. But that doesn’t mean I ought to accept these cult-like devotionals as being anything close to reliable. Before I knew it, I was writing back.
Responding to a marketing email is the one thing you should never do. But beyond incredulous, I was also insulted. As it happens, on the same day the greatest Irish tin whistle album ever to be unveiled to humanity had been unleashed to an adoring public, we had put a record out. Frankly, I was jealous that the tin whistle guy was soaking up all the attention.
I couldn’t say our record (Country & Western Suburbs, if you’re asking) was ‘the hottest thing this Christmas’ as all the children in my life would rather mow the back lawn with nothing but a pair of nail clippers before listening to anything I might produce, but I’d like to think that it was well regarded on, at least, the less consequential holidays like AFL Grand Final Eve. It’s on Bank Holidays and Arbour Day that I feel we can really make our mark.
Here’s the irony. After being pummelled with messages on a daily basis, I finally write back and am greeted with nothing but stone-cold silence. Well, mostly stone-cold silence with the sound of an Irish tin whistle way off in the distance. Maybe I hurt their feelings. Most likely I confused them by replying to a marketing email. Or perhaps I failed to notice the tiny disclaimer that so often resides at the bottom of so many such emails: this inbox is unattended.
I won’t tell you what I got for Christmas. What I will tell you, though, is that I didn’t get a CD featuring the Irish tin whistle. I did, however, nominate all its tracks for Triple J’s hottest 100 and was disappointed beyond words to see that it not only failed to take out top spot, but missed the countdown entirely. Still, there’s always next Christmas to look forward to.