Some Readers Seem to Want to top recent examples of “Stupid Reasons for Protest Unsubscribes”.
This one’s hilarious: in Friday’s free edition, having no paid advertisers, I ran a house ad for my drone site, Drone Pilot Wings. I haven’t been doing much in the way of articles on that site lately, but several that I have done really push for pilots being more responsible with drones, vs. doing stupid things like getting in the way of airplanes trying to fight wildfires. There’s even an article category called “Pilot Error” to highlight such stories.
Of course, the tiny ad doesn’t get into all that, it just points interested readers to the site to learn more.
Well, Adee in Massachusett’s protest this weekend was that This is True “is about getting subscriptions to your drone project. I think drones are extremely dangerous in the wrong hands.”
D’oh!
Wow, Adee sure thought that one through! I created True in 1994 so that in 2015 I could use its platform to pimp drones. What foresight! Why didn’t I use that amazing ability to pick stocks or lotto numbers? Yeah, the whole point of my flagship publication is to promote a tiny, money-losing sideline. I may have hurt myself rolling my eyes so hard.
Of course, cars, beer, rocks, and badminton racquets are also dangerous when “in the wrong hands,” so I assume Adee boycotts every publication, TV show, or entertainment venue that advertises cars, beer, and anything else that’s “dangerous” in the “wrong” hands, right? Riiiight.
A More Thoughtful Approach
You know what I think is a better (and dare I say, more intelligent) approach? Support sites that encourage responsible use of drones, cars, alcoholic beverages, and other “dangerous” products. Such as, say, This is True, which encourages intelligent consideration about everything!
Wouldn’t that be better for society than plugging your ears and running away screaming? Well sure! But Adee sure didn’t think about that, and thus is part of the primary problem with the world. Isn’t that the true danger to society?
Adee was replaced by Dylan in Texas, who startled me with his upgrade order this weekend. He commented: “I have been a This is True free subscriber since 2009, when I was in high school. I always said that I would upgrade to the Premium version when I graduated college and had an income, and now that I am finally in that position I am ready to not only upgrade, but also ‘upgrade’ for the past 6 years. Thank you for years of making me think differently than I normally do on a regular basis, something that I feel has made me a better person overall.”
What “startled” me? He had manually pushed up the price for his $30 subscription to $180: $30 for his one-year upgrade, $50 to “pay” for the free newsletters he has received over the years, and $100 to join the True member community so he could interact with others like him — readers who “think differently than I normally do …[which] has made me a better person overall.”
Thinking can be “dangerous” too, if it’s in the wrong brain. Dylan shows how to do it right.
Update
When I said it was a “money-losing sideline” I meant it: I shut it down a couple of years before moving from Colorado.
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