marketing sucks

[egypturnash]

I just got two anonymous comments on the last entry.

Both were absolutely identical, both were from IP addresses somewhere in Asia - one from Chiang Mai University, one from Seoul.

Both were advertising some movie. "The Passion Of the Christ". I had no intention of seeing it before, but now I certainly won't. Especially when the comment-spam advocates this:

This is a chain comment - post to FIVE of your blog friends in order to keep this going - pray for salvation and peace!

Simply VIEW the page SOURCE with your browser, find where it says CUT_HERE_HOMES for the beginning and end of where to cut! Paste that as your comment. Thank you for passing this on to FIVE blog friends!

So, let's see, how many of Peggy's buttons are pressed here? Being preached to; having advertisements invade her life (I avoid TV, I run an ad-blocker, I take deliberate steps to live as ad-free a life as I can), being blatantly used for transmitting others' ideas, cynical attempts to harness memesheepage... I'm really reluctant to turn off anonymous comments, damnit. But if this garbage keeps up... (Of course, for all I know, this could be a cynical smear campaign by people who think it's offensive to their religion, trying to create a bad buzz for the film by associating it with spam. But that way lies tinfoil hats.)

Anyway, I'm telling all of my "blog friends" reading this that this movie's advertising via spam, and not to go see it.

---

Addendum: I'd emailed the production company behind the film. This is what they wrote back-

The choice not to see the film is, of course, your own. However, our
company does not send out mass emails and this was most likely done by
someone not affiliated with the film.

I'm not quite sure if I believe them or not on the 'not affiliated' part. It's quite plausible that someone somewhere up or down the distribution chain is doing it...

Comments

[uhusted.livejournal.com]

I got one of those as well. Wretched spambots.

[strredwolf.livejournal.com]

I turned off Anonymous replies since LJ now has free acounts again.

[rtdn.livejournal.com]

I'll probably go see it because I'm a brainwashed christian sheeple mundane.

[lediva.livejournal.com]

I feel left out. Nobody wants to spam my LJ!

[thphilster.livejournal.com]

Gimme that Ol' time religion (tm) pat. pending.

yer pal,
Phil.

[milkpanzer.livejournal.com]

I love advertising (in my own cynical way). But I'm immune to typical adverts so I can allow myself to watch them. Anything I want to consume is usually not advertised.

And I already knew I wasn't going to see any Jesus movie. I don't understand how people fall for movie adverts especially. Lots of people say "That movie looks great from the ads". Well yeah, duh. A lot of money was spent making the ads look good. Doesn't mean the movie is any good. They probably put the best parts in the commercial. Nowadays they even edit the clips together in such a way to imply something about the movie which isn't even true.

Anyway...for some reason I'm ranting. Can I blame the cold meds? ^^;

Re:

[trikotomy.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the Final Fantasy movie trailer in which they put the villain's dialogue over the hero's actions to completely change the meaning of what's being said. I haven't seen any examples of this recently, but some ads display clips that simply do not exist at all. In one of the ads for that awful movie Twister, there's an absent scene of a first person view of a vehicle flipping over and landing the windshield of a car. One of the makers of the film talked about this in an interview on the Tonight Show, describing an incident in which a child confronted him about the missing scene and he responded by telling the child to purchase another ticket and watch more carefully.

[spengler.livejournal.com]

The movie's pulling enough weight that it's front-page news here [the Union Edition of the New Jersey Sunday Star Ledger], without the article itself being a blurb to go read the A&E section.

Rather, it's a page 8 story relating preview-showing impressions from a Catholic priest, a few faithful from the Christian and Jewish sects, and questions on the handling of some Biblical-nitpicks, most notably the possible anti-Semitic aspects of the film. And I think that there is why this movie's being given a second glance.

Re:

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm just pissy because they're trying to advertise it in my LJ! Damn spammers...

Mindless comments, in order;

[paka.livejournal.com]

1. Why bother trying to figure out whether you have a spirituality, and trying to figure that out, when you can go out for pointless McAdvertising Kitchen Fresh Christianity, slightly less meaningful than the last trip to Starbucks?

2. I wasn't going to see this movie before. Spamming me does not fill me with a deep need to do so, either.

3. I wonder whether the movie may have been anti-semitic just to take advantage of the hype for marketing. For some reason, the idea that it might be anti-semitic doesn't bother me at all. Inspiring religious Christians to hate Jews is like inspiring them to hate homosexuals. You'd have a harder time convincing teenagers to be depressed.

Re: Best Porn Sites on the net today

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

If this is a bot, how stupidly ironic that I got two spam comments on an entry complaining about being spam-commented. If it's a human, ha ha ha. You are ironic and funny.