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Diary of a Seducer
The Birth, Counseling and Rejection of a Mass Email Message
by Augi Garred

This is an absolutely true story. I have experienced rejection more than anyone you’ve ever met. And I’m not talking about that adolescent whiplash where the girl relentlessly says "no" to the boy’s nave advances.

Nope. My form or rejection is far more penetrating then such pubescent wailing.

Last week at DCA (DotCommer’s Anonymous), the facilitator asked me to share my pain. "Now, Jay, really dig in and tell us where it hurts."

"Hmmm...where do I start?" I said. "Oh, yeah. Have you heard that Aretha Franklin song, ’Reject’? Where they repeat, like a bunch of ecstatic little hippies, ’R-E-J-E-C-T--- Just a little bit’ my ass! That song makes

me want to puke!"

"Umm, Jay, that’s ’Respect,’ not ’Reject,’" barked out Mr. Napster.

"I don’t care! That song is about ME, man! Has anybody else gone through this?"

Kozmo stood up. "You know, Jay, you’re not the only one who has felt rejection in the last two years."

I gave him my deepest sympathy. "Yeah, as though putting some dweeb on a Moped and having him deliver a Snickers bar was such a brilliant idea."

"Maybe you just need someone to run your errands so you can stay focused on your cause."

I said, "What. Like scrubbing my underwear, Lackey?"

Then that precocious little know-it-all, Jeeves, butted in. "Would you like to know how many movies have been made about rejection?"

"Shut up!" I screamed, and stormed out of the building. "What a bunch of wimps!"

LET ME TELL YOU HOW IT STARTED. I was born out of a desire to increase sales of a waning product. This "hot" product advertised itself as a ’revolutionary new way to exercise without having to get out of bed - the Abdominator.’ After sales had dropped, they fired their ad agency and went looking for someone fresh to help them out. After an unbelievable two-day search, they settled on Scheister, Spamm &

Junkie - the ingenious "creative" place in which I was born.

With a very lean budget and little time to spare, SS&J had to find an economical way to hit the masses and do it fast. The logical decision? SPAM the muthas!

The account was assigned to a very ambitious junior level creative, Danny Kittakaka. He was given a 328 page in-depth analysis from a research firm, a creative brief from some guy everyone called "Seedy," and a deadline two days away.

"Thanks, Devon, for this opportunity. I’ll get to work on it immediately."

Danny took the materials with him to his lively gray cubicle, put on his headphones, and listened to The Cure for an hour and a half to get inspired. Then he made a call to his girlfriend to see what time Real

World was playing, all the while eating a bag of extra crunchy potato chips.

Three hours later he read the executive summary of the analysis and threw the other 325 pages into the trash. Now it was time to get to work. "I’m going to come up with the BIG idea for this one," Kittakaka thought to himself as he adjusted his Buddy Holly glasses. "This campaign is going to get me promoted."

Kittakaka scratched his head. He stared up at the ceiling. He tried to think of people who had experienced great abdominal workouts.

"What about Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel?" He adjusted his turtleneck. "Didn’t he lay on his back for 18 years or something painting the ceiling? Oh, this is good. Everyone knows Michelangelo. How about, ’It won’t take 16 years on your back to make your abs look like Michelangelo’s.’"

He bit his lip. "On second thought," he considered, "maybe that’s a bit too esoteric."

Danny ate a Kit Kat bar and rocked in his cube, waiting for the Richard Simmons’ web site to come up. "This guy is a total dork but he turned my mom onto exercising so he must know something. She fits the demographic, I guess. There’s bound to be something I can, um, borrow...here."

After two minutes, the site finished loading and there was Richard, replete in tights and his ever present super fro.

Kittakaka clicked away and drilled down until he found what he was looking for: workout video clips. Unfortunately, there was only one and its title, ’Richard Does it to the Oldies,’ created some very disturbing images in Danny’s head. He decided to skip it and get a fresh perspective. So he jumped on his scooter and buzzed over to Starbucks for some caffeine.

At Starbucks, he looked up at the intimidating menu, afraid to say it aloud but eked the words out anyway to the counter girl. "I’ll have a caramel Ma...um, Ma-Chee-auto," he said, barely audible, hoping to god he’d said it right.

"One caramel Mah-KEY-atto," the counter girl called out with a little sneer in her pierced tongue. "Will that be tall, grande, or..." Kittakaka broke in, "Can I just have a small?"

Returning from Starbucks feeling like a pathetic, mispronouncing loser, Kittakaka needed some reassurance that he wasn’t a pathetic, mispronouncing loser - and found it almost immediately: his Arnold Schwarzenegger action figure.

Arnold had been one of Danny’s icons since he was young, watching movies like ’Commando’ and ’Predator.’ Though he appreciated the more sensitive side of the former Mr. Olympus in ’Kindergarten Cop,’ Danny felt ’The Terminator (T2)’ was his best. That movie, to Danny, represented the ultimate combination of machine muscle and human sensitivity.

As he sat there twisting the doll into different macho poses, Danny started to speak in that familiar Austrian accent. "Look at my six pack! I got it from lying in bed while Maria read the New Yorker. You can, too, with the Abdominator. The Abdominator is so easy to use, even your grandma can do it. Just wake up, put it under your bottom, and hit the big green button. Takes only 15 minutes every day and you can sleep while it abdominizes your flabby stomach!"

He held the plastic doll firmly in his hands, a smile forming.

"How could it be so simple? The Abdominator’s gentle massaging action penetrates key acupressure points along your spine that activate the electrochemical agents who attack and destroy fat in your abs. And if you’re not completely satisfied with the Abdominator, we’ll give you your money back, guaranteed. Just $199.95 or four easy installments. Buy it or else - Abdominated!"

At last, Danny Kittakaka, Midwest farm boy and lowly junior level creative who had dreamed of being an advertising copywriter since he was 33, had discovered the big idea. And man, it sure was a good one.

THAT WAS IT. THAT WAS HOW I WAS BORN. No date. No flowers. Not even a movie. Just some guy holding a plastic action figure. And since my father, Danny, had about 39 hours to spare, he leaned back in his chair and did what anyone with aspirations to rise to the top would do: He took a nap.

TWO DAYS LATER AT 7:08 IN THE A.M., I was suddenly awoken by the sound of numerous voices talking about something. Soon I discovered what the topic was: me.

"Yeah, that’s not a bad concept, Kittakaka. Approaching the target audience from the perspective of a character. Hmm...I don’t think I’ve seen that before. It’s not only new, it’s, what do you say???"

"’Real,’ Devon?"

Devon smiled. "Exactly. Real is in, isn’t it? God I’m good."

"But..." Kittakaka attempted to remind everyone who came up with the idea in the first place. He wasn’t loud enough.

Devon, who kind of resembled the devil, continued. "We’ll make it sound like we truly care that they lose 100 pounds...Huh HA! Even though we know they’ll toss it in the closet in a month."

"Yeah," some dude with purple hair and a tattoo on his forehead jumped in. "Like anyone can just lie in bed, do nothing and, like, lose pounds."

"What about the client, Devon?" A Sinead O’Connor look-a-like spouted.

"Oh, don’t worry. This campaign is going to make them realize how much we care about them..."

"...And how their customers are going to drop $200 cash money in the process. Ka-Ching!" Everyone laughed.

Devon regained control. "But it sounds too much like a TV spot right now, so let’s do a little brainstorming and see what we can come up with."

Moments later I was getting tossed back and forth across the table like a game of hot potato; disjointed, reassembled, and juxtaposed.

"Yeah, it needs to be shorter, give less detail and be more vague," the bald girl said.

"I think it would be cool," another chimed, "if we could use one of those subconscious messages to motivate the buyer to..."

"How in the hell would we do that, Gilchrist? By attaching a subsonic sound file that would penetrate their optical lobe and force their hand to hit the REPLY button?"

"Shut the #$@! Up!" Devon commanded. We need to get this thing done and blasted to 1.7 million users tomorrow afternoon. I think Kittakaka has what he needs, right?"

Kittakaka woke up from his state of shock. "Yeah, sure. I mean, definitely, Devon."

"That’s what I thought. Now, get the hell out of here and give me some copy!"

WHEN I WOKE UP 24 HOURS LATER

I felt refreshed. Apparently, I had been approved by the client and was going to be launched in several phases. As a matter of fact, I was so capable that they were going to "automate me" and even send me to international markets! I was excited at the opportunity to travel so far and wide. Little did I know just how far, how wide, and how painful this trip was going to be.

Over the next few days I was ceaselessly launched across the network from a T-3 pipe onto laptops, desktops, and PDAs the world over. It was an incredible feeling - that of being so prolific a message in such a short amount of time. I saw the faces of children, business people and grandmothers in their best flower dresses. Best of all, I felt the fingertips of beautiful women stroking the keys every so slowly as they downloaded me onto their laptops, searching for the perfect offer.

"Here I am, baby!" I said to myself. "Open me up and get a big surprise."

The surprise was on me.

One after another, as I approached them with my electronic pickup line, they either ignored me, deleted me, or worse - checked the box for "block this address." Talk about an esteem builder.

Even though I am the persistent type, after getting over 401,000 deletes, my attitude began to change and I started feeling depressed. I mean, how much of this can a spam take?

Sometimes I felt a glint of hope when someone would pass me over and leave me in their in-box. Soon this hope was shattered, too, when I discovered they were merely rushing to read their other messages and later would move me into that purgatory for everything unwanted - the "MISC" folder.

One day this actually came to be an advantage when one user accidentally put me in his "X" file. There I was, surrounded by hundreds of "Hot, Horny Babes!," "Hot Teens with Tight Panties!" and my favorite, "Big housewives looking for Love!" Had I had half a brain I would have taken advantage of their offers, but I didn’t have a Visa card for my free trial.

I soon went from depressed to suicidal until, sigh of relief, some crusty old grandma opened me up and started checking me out. I didn’t care that her glasses were as thick as Mason jars. So what if she was past her prime? It was obvious she could use the Abdominator and I wasn’t about to let her granny ass go.

"Come on, Mrs. Robinson. You know you want rock hard abs so you can impress your friends down at the

Grange..."

She stared at my body copy, smiling, wincing, straining her eyes to focus.

I crooned. She clicked. I rolled my I’s. She wheezed and spun her scrolling wheel. I gave her my satisfaction guarantee! At last, I was going to close a deal.

I was so stoked. She sat there for a good fifteen minutes looking up, then down, tapping on the mouse, playing with the keys. "Would you get with the picture!" I bellowed from the depths of my soul. "I mean, how long does it take to make such a simple decision? For godssake, Eleanor, Click the REPLY button!"

I could feel her pulse rising...could sense her passion. I felt the mouse pointer coming closer, closer, closer, closer...

She called out, "Walter, you old sonofabitch. What’s wrong with this g’damn sewing machine?"