Opportunity - the Chinese have over 8700 words for it, if I remember my high school Spanish class.
The internet has proven to be a beacon for all types of marketing and promotions - you can buy everything from Vi8gra to Vigara to Vaigira with just a few clicks of your mouse, swipes from your finger, or even without human intervention because you have malware in your system.
It's just something about the mesmerizing attraction of the raw potential of an unexplored market - the wide-open vistas of gilded promise, the waiting avalanche of dollars which draws in souls from all walks of life and every corner of the globe - as well as those posessed of every type of moral failing.
Now some entrepreneurial souls have invented a devious new way to make a living. Just post people's mug shots online, SEO the crap out of them, and destroy a person's chances of ever getting a good job again.
Then - and this is the cleverest bit - charge them hundreds or thousands of dollars to take the photos away when they come pleading with you.
You see, in several U.S. states, the actions of law enforcement are disclosed online for public review. This includes mugshots of people who are arrested, whether it's for manslaughter, or stock market fraud resulting in global economic disaster (like that could happen?), or even because they fingered the wrong person and released him an hour later.
So rather than wasting this valuable resource of public humiliation, with just a few clicks of your mouse and some devious manipulation of search engine ranking cues, you can guarantee that anybody Googling a person's name will be presented with that mugshot plastered front-and-center atop the list of results. For years to come. (just ask Rick Santorum....)
So the next time you go to a job interview, you'd better have a pretty convincing story to tell about that time you got arrested by the police because you look a bit like a mugger when you wear your football hoodie...
Bastards like this are why I'm convinced we are doomed.
The internet has proven to be a beacon for all types of marketing and promotions - you can buy everything from Vi8gra to Vigara to Vaigira with just a few clicks of your mouse, swipes from your finger, or even without human intervention because you have malware in your system.
It's just something about the mesmerizing attraction of the raw potential of an unexplored market - the wide-open vistas of gilded promise, the waiting avalanche of dollars which draws in souls from all walks of life and every corner of the globe - as well as those posessed of every type of moral failing.
Now some entrepreneurial souls have invented a devious new way to make a living. Just post people's mug shots online, SEO the crap out of them, and destroy a person's chances of ever getting a good job again.
Then - and this is the cleverest bit - charge them hundreds or thousands of dollars to take the photos away when they come pleading with you.
You see, in several U.S. states, the actions of law enforcement are disclosed online for public review. This includes mugshots of people who are arrested, whether it's for manslaughter, or stock market fraud resulting in global economic disaster (like that could happen?), or even because they fingered the wrong person and released him an hour later.
So rather than wasting this valuable resource of public humiliation, with just a few clicks of your mouse and some devious manipulation of search engine ranking cues, you can guarantee that anybody Googling a person's name will be presented with that mugshot plastered front-and-center atop the list of results. For years to come. (just ask Rick Santorum....)
So the next time you go to a job interview, you'd better have a pretty convincing story to tell about that time you got arrested by the police because you look a bit like a mugger when you wear your football hoodie...
Bastards like this are why I'm convinced we are doomed.
About the Author:
Ben Scott is a blogger whose muse is shadenfreude (a German word meaning "laughing at another's misfortune") - you can read more of his work at Why We're Doomed and if you enjoyed this article, you'll probably love this post!
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