“During lunch at Boston University, five girls ogled a 6-foot-7 blond senior with a winning smile and high cool quotient as he approached their table. He was cute, they agreed. But equally intriguing was his pitch.
“I heard this is amazing!” Pam Spuehler, a sophomore in general studies, said as she read a postcard touting the OneNote software program that Cody Gossett had handed her.
“It is,” Gossett said. “You should check it out!”
“I will!” Spuehler said. Then as she eyed the phrase “Save Trees. Use OneNote” on his chest, she added, “how do I get one of those T-shirts?”
The exchange was a corporate marketer’s dream — and one, in this case, come true for Microsoft Corp., which hired Gossett to peddle its notes-organizing software on campus.”
This makes my fucking soul hurt. I don’t really want to have to filter people I meet into boxes labelled “Real person” or “Corporate Lackey/Shill, Dead in Heart and Soul.”. But it looks like I’ll have to do so.
I need cameras hooked up to PDAs, and they need to scan the faces of people I meet, feed this info back into a database, and then we call all collectively rate people we know and produce a centralised FUCKING SPAM FILTER FOR ACTUAL PEOPLE.
“Hi, I’m Cody! Have you heard about the new Microsoft OneNote Servi…”
“Woah there! Sorry to interrupt you, but my service tells me that you’re a drone, and are to be shunned. SHUN!”
“But I…”
“SHUN!”
“But Microsof…”
“SHUN! Also, your name is fucking Cody. Jesus, grow a pair, will you?”
October 30, 2005 at 8:59 am
Whuffie!
October 30, 2005 at 9:37 am
http://bu.facebook.com/profile.php?id=900193&l=c4539e880b
October 30, 2005 at 8:54 pm
I already get this from my Computer Science lecturers.
In one of my courses this semster you had to learn to shut up and not answer any questions, because if you do the lecturer would “reward” you with Microsoft Rubik’s Cubes and DVDs promoting the next version of Visual Studio. On Thursday I have an exam which will largely be about how Microsoft implements web services. I am trying to learn about web services in general while studying for this, to make it more palatable.
My other course was better – you just had to mentally filter out the stuff about how great tablet computers are. I’m not sure whether there was any Microsoft marketing involved here – it’s possible the lecturer honestly found tablet computers exciting.
October 30, 2005 at 10:53 pm
Converts
I think it’s amusing when the more senior members of out faculty discover some
cool new piece of tech and think it’s the only thing in the world.
Computer Scientists should know better than Visual Studio though :-/
The joy of having our salaries paid for by people who *want* to be corporate whores
in the future.
– MugginsM
October 30, 2005 at 10:50 pm
Experts
I’ve been having to do this with born-again religious freaks for years.
The main problem with the MS ones is that it’s “normal” people, who don’t
spend their time plugged into the ‘net, who are the vulnerable prey.
Completely disgusting.
Corporate Sales should probably be the 5th rider of the apocalypse.
– MugginsM
October 31, 2005 at 4:51 am
I am never approached by anyone in malls.
…never.