As disappointed as we are with what a massive closet liberal Ian is, his decision to sign me up for ZNet has been paying endless dividends in terms of hilarious liberal bullshit. I got this in my mailbox the other day:
Hello Jack, Our database shows that you are overdue for a Sustainer Donation. It could be only a few weeks, it could be much longer.
In either event would you please either send us a check for the pledged donation amount to
ZNet Sustainer Program
18 Millfield St
Woods Hole, MA 02543
or go to your Sustainer Account page from the link on the top page of ZNet and change to donate by credit card and enter working credit card information.
We are in a financial crisis brought on in part by Sustainers pledging and then not donating, so please take some time to help us with the general problem and with cleaning up the sustainer situation as well.
Thank you,
Michael Albert
P.S.
Your account information appears below...the indicated debt is what is currently overdue, the reference to a next payment shows when it will increase by the amount of your periodic pledge.
Here is the current information we have regarding your
account. Please review it and let us know if you have
any questions.
Your Name: Jack Hand
Your Email: ############
You donate via CHECK / MONEY ORDER
You donate $10.00
You donate Yearly
Your current balance is: $10.00
Your next donation is due: 09/04/2004
This is pretty awesome. It's got that whole marxist/socialist thing going where they call everything a “donation” but then try to make it mandatory. They love their language of choice, but they really don't understand why you're not choosing to just do what they want, and it makes them angry. Anyway, another email arrived today...
Hello Jack, Dear Name,
Z has been losing money. Costs are up and revenues down. We must reverse this trend.
Since the Sustainer Program began we have not increased donation rates. To survive and thrive we must now receive more revenues from our most supportive users.
We know you all have busy schedules so that visiting and altering your sustainer page is not something we could reasonably expect everyone, or even most of you, or even more than a small number of you, to quickly do.
So we would like to make the changes ourselves, in one swoop, affecting everyone at once.
Unless you tell us otherwise, that is, for those of you who are now donating less than $10 a month, we will increase your donation by 20%. For those donating $10 or more, we will increase your pledge by 30%.
For some of you money is tight and you cannot afford this generous an increase. To prevent us from altering your donation level, please contact us at sysop@zmag.org asap but by Sept 29th at the latest. Just send an email saying "please don’t change my donation amount."
On the other hand, if you decide that you would like to raise your donation more than we have proposed, that would be wonderful and you can do that yourself, of course, though please wait until after we have made our changes on Sept 30th.
We thank you for your support of all Z’s work up until now and we thank you as well for what we hope will be your willingness to accommodate the new rates we are proposing.
Thanking you in advance,
Michael Albert and Daniel Morduchowicz for ZNet
Lydia Sargent, Eric Sargent, and Andy Dunn for Z Magazine
Yes, this is truly awesome. First off, note the fuckup of the automated personalizer. “Hello Jack, Dear Name.” Nice, guys. Your semi-functional personalization script makes me feel like you're speaking directly to me, and that we're actually close friends. It's so ingratiating, that it's made me fail to notice how tenuous your handle on the meaning of “pledge” and “donation” is. For example, if you increase my pledge amount, is it really a pledge at that point? And how much respect does that show for my solemn pledge that Ian made on my behalf and I have no intention of honoring? If you forget that for a moment, and pretend that I actually take that pledge seriously, then why can't my socialist masters at ZNet take it seriously too?
What's also totally hott, is how ZNet has chosen to go with a progressive structure for their mandatory optional donations. Even as their strange little utopian fantasyworld sputters and stalls out, they keep shoving their faggy idealism on people. Hey, guys. You can't even run a fucking email newsletter without going bankrupt, why do you think you can run a government? You can't even collect income without putting your insane struggle to understand choice and free will on public display. Why do you people feel so morally superior to everyone else? You're at a kindergarten level of social maturity, and you think I need to learn from it.
Finally, I'd like to point out that after seeing the first email above, Dan decided to sign up as a sustainer. He registered for ThreePurpleHearts@hotmail.com, and signed himself up as Sustainer John Kerry, with a $50,000 pledge on a bi-annual basis. Despite his obvious generousity, ZNet cancelled his subscription, apparently tipped off by the fact that there's no way that anybody stupid enough to buy into their crap could ever amass more than $250 at a given time.