You may have heard about Dear Leader pre-empting your cell phone with his “messages.” It’s one of the many reasons why I won’t have a cell phone. But, there’s no escaping Dear Leader – and Dear Leader prospects. 
We have an “unlisted” phone number. I enclose the word in quotation marks to convey sarcasm. Because our “unlisted” number, it turns out, is available to Dear Leader prospects. We have been getting at least two robo-calls a day now for the past week from Dear Leader prospect Ken Cuccinelli and Dear Leader Prospect Terry McAuliffe.
We called the phone company to ask what was up. Were we not paying them to keep our number unpublished? Oh, certainly. But government acquires unlisted numbers, which are somehow linked to voter registration information – and shits all over the obviously expressed desire of people like us who do not want to be called. Politicians are exempt from the do not call lists. Having an unlisted number will not stop them from annoying you at all hours or clogging your answering machine with endless (one went on for 5 minutes) canned political speechifying.
It appears the only way to avoid Dear Leader is to jerk the got-damned cord from the wall and stomp the phone underfoot.
Which seems like a not bad idea to me.
I don’t have a land line phone, haven’t had one for over 3 years now. Just a cell phone (two if you count my work phone). Although I occasionally get spam text messages or phone calls (maybe once per year) I think it is easier to make a stink over spam calls to cell phones because you can go cry to the cell phone provider about the spam calls “draining your battery” or “making your minutes run up”. That said, it’s all a bunch of bullshit and “they” will do as they wish, because “they” are the ones in power.
I took my work truck to Jiffy Lube a couple years ago and stupidly put my personal cell phone number on the paperwork because, at the time, my work cell phone wasn’t working. Less than an hour later I got two different spam phone calls to my cell phone. Jiffy Lube never admitted to selling my info, but they obviously did, immediately after typing it into their computer system. I would bet money that 99.99 percent of all companies that ask for information they have no business asking for, do so because it actually is their “business” to sell that information to other shithead companies. I’m sure the bottom level Jiffy Lube employees have no idea that is what their corporate headquarters is doing, but hey, one more reason to hate the major corporations that work hand in hand with the government, destroying freedom and being douchebags since “insert witty timeline here”.
Jacob, I think you’re right about service companies like Jiffy Lube selling contact info to advertisers. I was also told that there are spammers who buy business cards that have cell numbers and email addresses. Maybe since so many people are dropping their landline phone service, mass marketing is undergoing some changes to try to reach potential consumers, which is a shrinking pool in this economy.
Exactly.
It’s a shrinking pool, and I think it’s exactly why companies like Facebook, and Google, and Youtube, continue to demand more and more personal information out their “users”. So they can track, control, and sell to them.
I deleted my Facebook page back in February and am thoroughly disgusted at myself for even attempting to use that website to wake up my friends and family. But now google and youtube (I have a gmail e-mail address and I fucking love all the free entertainment youtube provides. Go search “fail compilations” on youtube if you’re bored and want to see how stupid humanity can be… as if anyone needs more reassurance that most people are idiots…but dammit those compilations are hilarious) are going in the exact same direction as Facebook (wanting more and more personal information from me. In incrementalism, of course. They don’t come right out and say “hey, we need to know everything about you so we can fuck you” it’s subtle changes and demands over time, just like how America got successfully hijacked). All that said, I’ll stick around to let them know they can shove it right up their asses. And dude, you should’ve seen my Facebook page. It wasn’t public, because I’m not an idiot, but “fuck the government” was typed about every other sentence, and I went from hundreds of “friends” to nothing but my close family who put me on their “ignore” list. Ah, good times.
Yup – The Privileged Few, they have to suffer so much to make us pathetic, stupid sheep see the light – and they’ll force it down our throats either way.
Bury them in the woods?
Dammit, we need more woods… And soon, it’ll make the Sahara look fertile, what with all the “stuff” leaking out…
Holy cow. In my country they could come under all sorts of criminal acts. Go with Cuccinelli in any case, he’s more honest than most.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/words-vs-thoughts
Agreed.
He’s preferable to that piano-toothed carpetbagger, at any rate!