

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Why it pays to be kind - jctanner
http://www.nevertryneverfail.com/goodbadugly/

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coldpie
> The other half, however, are less pleasant to read and mostly contain a
> colorful mixture of swear words, conveying the basic message that they’d
> rather not be contacted in the future.

The fact that a full half of the people who bothered to respond were so
offended by your actions that they took the time to swear at you might be a
clue that spamming your customers is not a good way to generate positive
feedback.

I recently bought tickets from Ticketmaster and stupidly gave them my real
email address instead of my spam email, thinking perhaps they would send
something I would need to get my tickets. I think I had to unsubscribe from
five separate lists to get them to stop sending me garbage.

> I wish that they’d just click the “Unsubscribe” link in the email, since
> that’s what it’s there for after all

Tell you what, every day you send a spam bomb, spend 2 minutes staring at the
wall for each and every person that clicks the Unsubscribe link. Then you'll
have some understanding of how much time you are wasting for your potential
(now probably ex-) customers. I mean, that's what the wall is there for after
all.

In short, fuck spammers.

~~~
edgarallenbro
Its really, _really_ not that bad.

I used to get mad about unwanted e-mails too. I used to keep a separate e-mail
to sign up for websites because of all the crap they sent me.

Turns out, its actually really fucking easy to get around this. I just went
through my recent unread e-mails and hit the unsubscribe button. At most it
takes 5 seconds per list.

Now I use my real e-mail for my real sites and I only get e-mails that I want.

This "Stare at a wall for 2 minutes for every person who you had the balls to
send an e-mail to" reeks of the kind of whiny first-world entitlement that I'm
beginning to associate with the color orange.

~~~
cafard
With the color orange? Is it Marching Season, or am I simply not up on the
latest trends in UI?

I don't find it a huge burden to zap unwanted mail. That said, this unwanted
mail does nothing to improve my notions of the senders.

~~~
dTal
I think they mean HN.

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arjie
This guy likely overestimates how important his app is. Usually, I don't want
to have a conversation when I try something out. Now he's gone and sent me a
huge email expecting me to read it right after I tell him to stop sending me
stuff.

I'd be annoyed. I wouldn't respond harshly, but I'd be annoyed.

It probably works to 'convert' people, though, so more power to them.

------
wreegab
> "please stop emailing me. I do not use the tool" ... the only apology for
> rudeness our support team has ever seen ...

"Please stop emailing me" is "rudeness"?

Seriously, is this for real?

~~~
saganus
I think one of the article's point is precisely that maybe that one email that
is "Not colorful, but also not incredibly encouraging", gets to you when it's
the Nth one you get, for different values of N for each person.

And the reason the email "gets" to you is because you might be in a bad mood,
you might not love to wake up to a pile of not-so-nice emails, you cat
scratched your favorite sandals today, etc, but in the end the author's point
is precisely that maybe the other side of the communication channel is having
issues of its own as well, and thus responding very poorly to the situation
("stop sending what I consider spam but you consider business"), i.e. when he
says "give people the benefit of the doubt and respond with kindness and
empathy regardless of the way other people are interacting in the situation"

------
jules
You know what's unkind? Sending people unwanted email. All email lists that
aren't opt-in are evil. Period. While I agree with the conclusion, the first
half of this article "it pays to be kind because then you'll get sympathy from
spammers" isn't exactly a great argument for it.

------
coldcode
In my first startup in the mid-80's there was no email support obviously; it
was all phone. We made it a point to always invite anyone who complained to
help us beta test the next version so we could incorporate their suggestions.
It usually took people who were unhappy and made them champions of the
product.

------
stronglikedan
There's a lot of assholes out there, and nothing feels better than killing
them with kindness. Does that make me an asshole too?

------
spikels
I wonder if many of the recent contoversies could have been avoided if all the
parties involved had followed this advice. The ability to forgive someone's
mistakes immediately is a very valuable trait. The ability to quickly
recognize your own mistakes is even more powerful.

------
TrainedMonkey
Article reminded me of the quote:

"Experience is something that we get right after we needed it most"

People can experience all kinds of things, acts of kindness, cruelty, logic,
and compassion are some of them. As you gain experience your world begins to
be colored by it. In that vein cruel person will see cruelty in others and
seek violent solutions first because in his experience that is what works.

Of course nothing is absolute, thus above should not be taken out of context
of random philosophical musing.

~~~
busyant
I've heard it said this way.

"In school, first you get the lesson, then you get the test. In life, it's the
other way around."

------
keslert
Interesting perspective on kindness. Worth a read!

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dalek2point3
just out of curiosity, what app are we talking about?

~~~
keslert
The Scout App - an app to help boys and leaders in the Boy Scouts of America
program to track progress. [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/scout-app-for-
boys-in-boy/id...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/scout-app-for-boys-in-
boy/id733163415?ls=1&mt=8)

