Pilcrow

As an editor, I'm often confronted with the problem of impact. Impact and its derivations are very very popular in marketing writing. You see, it seems that "effect" just isn't strong enough for some writers.* They want to be sure that customers believe that their product or service is more effective than anyone else's. I mean, you could tickle someone, and that's an effect. You don't want your customers thinking, well, that product or service will nudge our problems away, it'll coax them away, it'll erode them away gradually over millions of years and we don't have time to wait for that! We need solutions now! You have to make sure your customers understand that your product or service will have an immediate and strong effect: it will have impact! 

Naturally such an important and effective word as impact cannot be limited to a single use, as a noun. No, if something can have an impact, then it must be able to impact other things. Now to be fair, impact has been in use as a verb for a long time—apparently since its introduction into English in the 17th century, going by my dictionary. But the Microsoft style guidelines (as a purely non-random example) have been quite clear on the matter for at least the past seven years that impact is to be used only as a noun, not as a verb. Of course, nobody reads those guidelines anyhow, and even if they did, they certainly wouldn't let that get in the way of some impactful writing! It's crucial to impact the customer with the most impactful writing so that the sales pitch will have the desired impact. 

I'm certain the problem is obvious, now. By trying so hard to impact customers all the time with impactful writing about the impact they can get from the impactive products or services they're selling, impact itself is losing its impact. So today I would like to propose that marketing writers adopt a new term into their vocabulary: kaboom. KABOOM! It's much more than just an impact—it's explosive! Think of the kaboom that customers could get by using the kaboomful products or services to kaboom their productivity issues, for example. The kaboomfulability of kaboom to bring new levels of kaboomfulness to marketing writing so that it kabooms the customer much better than impact could ever impact them should be clear. Think of all the leverage you'd get by leveraging kaboo—hey wait. Leverage. Now there's a word that's getting tired too. And really, it's kind of dry and spineless and corporate sounding, isn't it? We need a word with some sweaty oomph to show people that you really mean it when you're using something, and leverage just doesn't have that. Might I suggest… manhandling?


*Not to mention the real reason is probably that most of them don't understand the different meanings and usage of "affect" and "effect".

Doldrums
When you're in the doldrums, take -1 ongoing to everything you try to do until you leave, and roll +hard.
On a 12+, fuck that, man, you've got better things to do. You're never stuck in the doldrums.
On a 10+, you lose a few hours to boredom but get out of the doldrums on your own.
On a 7-9, you can get out of the doldrums after a few days, but it's going to cost you: you owe a friend a favor, you took some regrettable actions, you missed a good opportunity, you missed an important deadline.
On a miss (6 or less), what's the point, nothing's going to change. Take -2 ongoing to everything you try to do, and sit around and mope until the watchdog shows up to chase/help you out. The MC can also pick two results from the 7-9 list.

Also, this:

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I am surprised that apparently I have invented the word (although realistically I can't be the only person to ever think of that). I've decided "dildoldrums" means being in a state when even having sex isn't enough to get you out of a funk of listlessness.

Being goofy by inventing the word has amused me enough to lift the doldrums a bit.

Hi guys,

I've been seeing your work for several years now and I have to say my first question is, how do you guys do it? How is it that I can ignore MySpace for weeks or even months at a time, but once I finally do log in, I'm immediately treated to a half-dozen or more new messages supposedly from hot women who supposedly have read my profile and supposedly want to chat over IM or email and send me photos of themselves. You've obviously got some way of detecting who's logged in recently, since these messages only show up once I've logged in, and in the intervening months when I've been away from MySpace, I don't get any message activity. Even though I know it's probably not very difficult to set up some kind of automated alert system, it still amazes me every time. Especially because the accounts are all new every time. In fact, even now as I'm still logged in while composing this post, you've got more brand-new accounts popping up and sending me fresh emails.

My next question, obviously, is why do you do it? It's immediately obvious that every single one of these accounts is fake, just a shell of hot girl photo plus boilerplate profile information, and the emails… well, I know that lots of real people actually do write fairly sloppily with little regard for punctuation or grammar, but come on, when I get five messages in a row from five supposedly different people that look like this:

Hi Good looking, How are you doing today? I'm Cathy by name , I was browsing through and saw your profile,i most tell you that you are a good looking man, and i will like to know you better please don't hesitate to get back to me.I'm single and searching for the right man for me, a man to spend the rest of my life with.i think i must let you know i am originally from Ama Louisiana,but currently in Malta to supervise a new modeling firm in Malta ..I'm 29yrs old no kids, i had relationships but didn't work out. I would like to know little more about yourself,you can reach me at catwilson27@yahoo.com I will be waiting to read back from you .
Cathy.

hi baby how re you doing .. it will be my pleasure to know you if you don't mind.. am hannah by name.. baby hope to hear from you..

Hello how are you doing,I am Rose new on this dating site..Well i am looking for my soul mate to spend the rest of my life with,I am looking for a man who is Honest,Caring,Understanding,God fearing,Faithful and Loving..Well if you don't mind you can contact me here at roseaheto10@yahoo.com or you can give me your yahoo address so that i can add you and share pictures..Hope to hear from you soon..
Rose. Regards.

Nice going through your profile it really sound intresting to me and i would really like to know more about you if u dont really mind Cliton Annie is my name originally from brazil but based in battle Mountain nevada ... stoped been a model since three weeks which i have been in manchester uk clitonannie@yahoo.com is my mail and u can reach me on the im also ... Annie cares!!!

Hi, my name is Ayishatu
Its a pleasure to get in contact with you, i decided to send you this message after reading your profile which caught my attention. Anyway i will like to give you my personal email address so that you can contact me direct for us to know more about each other For me to send u mine Lovely Pics Well give me a reply with ur Email Address . my address: Timetells200 (AT) Yahoo.com Hope to hear from you soon. Yahoo Messenger : Timetells200 Email ADDRESS : Timetells200 (AT) Yahoo.com Hope to Hear from u as soon as Possible..

It's pretty obvious that they're all pre-generated garbage. And I know that real people can be dumb and desperate and occasionally fall for this kind of nonsense and respond, but are you really getting enough responses to make this crap worthwhile? What's the cost-to-profit ratio for this kind of business, anyhow? I'm sure a lot of this work can be done by very few people with a lot of the work being done automatically by computer scripting, but it just seems like you could find some better way to spend your time that might involve a bit more effort but would give you much better financial returns. 

As an aside here, I wonder if you're creating a shortage of available usernames on Yahoo, as this batch shows is one of your services of choice. After all, I'd expect these accounts would be getting regularly shut down for spam activity, but for a brief time the account name would be unavailable, and with the level of activity indicated by these fake MySpace accounts, you must be churning through a very large number of accounts at a constant and rapid rate.

My final question is, why aren't you better at it? Take a look again at those messages you're sending me: they are obviously utter garbage. Hell, I would think twice about responding to a message written like that if I knew for a fact that the sender really was an actual hot woman actually desperate to get into my pants. Surely it can't be that difficult to clean up your writing a bit and make the message seem more plausible. As another aside: what's the deal with all the God-fearing? Only one of the messages I'm quoting mentions it, but the "good Christian woman looking for a good Christian man" theme is pretty common, but doesn't add anything to your plausibility, particularly when you're also using scantily-clad photos and promising to send more pictures. Speaking of sending pictures, hey, I just got another message, from "Monika", and Monika's doing it right—she at least is sending me pictures directly, instead of just making empty promises. Unfortunately I can't view them, as MySpace is automatically blocking images and attachments from people I don't know, but I have no doubt that's for the best. Anyhow, as I was saying, you guys really suck at this: your messages are obviously canned and completely unbelievable, and your profiles are obviously fake, so why would anyone with enough sense to read fall for any of this crap? After all these years in this business, I'd really expect you to have some kind of competence to show. Apparently I should be more amazed that there are enough stupid people to keep you in business.

So that's what I've been wondering. I'd say I admire your persistence, but really this crap is tiresome and I'd much rather you found something better to do than waste everyone's time. Tell you what, though, I'll give you a free tip: instead of wasting your time with this nonsense of fake profiles, how about you hire a couple real live hot women to go out to bars and clubs and chat people up for their email addresses? Sure there'd still be plenty of people smart enough to recognize the obvious marketing scam for what it is and refuse or give a fake address, but I can guarantee you your overall response rates would increase. Because who doesn't want to chat with a pretty woman? And at least we'd have the pleasure of a brief real-life interaction with a real live pretty woman pretending to be interested in us… hey, that sounds like a strip club, actually. Do you guys run those, too?

Well, that's all I've got. No thanks for your time, please just go away.

Sincerely,

Philip

Random find on Flickr, using the "Explore" feature.

Also, let me just add this: has the Luxor lost all sense whatsoever? Who on earth thought that advertising these two shows together was a good idea? Note that besides this prominent sign outside the Luxor, there are additional advertisements all over Vegas. I pity the poor girls of Fantasy, inextricably tainted by association with freakin' Carrot Top. It's hard to think of a less sexy combination.