There’s always something to howl about.

The just-exactly-how-dumb-are-you Realtor-spam of the day: Inman’s non-ad ad might be extortion, but at least you’re invited to help them betray their own advertisers — for a fee, of course

This is what you will see if you click on a link to an Inman News article:

First: What ad? There isn’t any ad there, just a ransom note.

Who’s the hostage? That would be you. Inman is deliberately interposing itself between you and what you want, demanding payment to get out of your way. That much is extortion, and it’s extortion of the Chokepoint Charlie variety, since the chokepoint is entirely an artifice manufactured by Inman in order either to extort your funds or to punish you by delay for refusing to be extorted.

Nice behavior, huh?

There’s more. The non-ad ad actually attempts to insinuate that it is a matter of prestige to have been extorted in this fashion. “Club members,” the concierge in the pro shop will inform you, “have first claim on available tee times.” If you cough up the dough demanded by this chokepoint, you’re not a schmoo who got rolled in exchange for faster access to regurgitated press releases. To the contrary. You’re a member, one of the privileged elite. In essence, it’s like a line pass in Las Vegas: You’re not some ordinary sucker. No, sir! You’re a very special sucker!

We’re not done. Consider the advertisers, even though I can’t ever remember seeing an ad in this non-ad ad’s place. The “social contract” between Inman and the advertiser runs like this: “We know that our readers don’t want to be delayed. We know they just want access to whatever it is they clicked through to find. So, in exchange for your money, were going to frustrate and betray them — with your ad being the instrument of that betrayal.”

I cannot imagine an advertiser stupid enough to want to try to engage the people it just pissed off, but this is literally the expectation governing that particular advertising space.

But now we’re back to the non-ad ad. What does it really say? It says that Inman will take money from advertisers to frustrate and betray its own readers. Unless those readers are willing to pay the extortion money, in which case Inman will frustrate and betray its own advertisers, from whom it has already accepted payment.

What a tangled web!

I happen to think that Inman News is a den of vendorshills, just like Realtor magazine. But, as ugly as these practices might seem when you see them for what they actually are, in fact they are of a piece with other economics-of-scarcity business models. For the past ten centuries, vendors have cashed in by frustrating and betraying their own clients, then collecting a fee for getting out of the way. This is precisely the old school model of real estate representation, for just one example.

But looked at from the perspective of the economics-of-abundance, these kinds of practices are sleazy, ugly — repugnant. We personally should not take money for betraying — or forebearing to betray — our own clients, and we should be very careful in our dealings with people who do behave that way.

How do we know that Inman News is not to be trusted? Because they say so, very baldly, in that big blue non-ad ad.

Technorati Tags: , ,