My mom and viral marketing

There's something beautiful about people who don't get viral marketing. Like my mom... she forwards me viral marketing emails because she genuinely likes them. Usually, they're nothing clever: a cute animal, a recipe. An email makes her smile and then it heads my way...

And when I see her message, I think: "crappy affiliate viral marketing bastards... tricking my mom and all her friends... filling up my inbox with things I've seen 50 times already..."

But the truth is, the recipes and cute animals make my mom genuinely happy. And when I occasionally tell her to stop forwarding them, she gets hurt.

And then she forwards me something she can't resist... something that makes her so happy, she has to share. But she attaches a passive aggressive little note to the email in defense of the cute animal/viral marketer.

The note will say something like: "I know you don't like these, but this reminds me of you when you were little..." And I feel bad and mean for telling her not to send me little kids and kitties. And I respond, telling her she can send me anything she likes...

And she'll never know that the little smiley at the bottom of her rabbit-licking-bunny email goes to a website managed by a Latvian fake Viagra spam ring that uses the proceeds to fund human trafficking.

And that's what is truly beautiful about people who don't understand viral marketing... hopefully they never will.