Cyber Monday Briefing: More like Ultimate Spam Day
Cyber Monday is the biggest online shopping day of the year, when all those groggy-eyed Thanksgiving and Black Friday revelers take to their computers — usually while at work — to kill some time and buy some things.
But the day is also notorious for another thing: spam.
I’m not talking about the processed luncheon meat my friend’s mom used to serve us cold and over hot rice and beans. (The rice and beans would heat the meat; it was delicious.) I’m talking about worthless and time-wasting emails that get read by about 1 in 1 million people who receive them.
Bad enough Groupon has spawned this wave of copycat ‘daily deal’ spam letters that clog my inbox each morning. It seems that today, on Cyber Monday, every store I’ve ever shopped at online since 1999 has emailed me some sort of offer.
Twelve K-kups starting at $9.99?! Sorry, Costco still does better. Free shipping at Pottery Barn? I’ll skip the $1,500 end table, which I guess would save me about $50 in shipping, and buy a $150 end table instead; thanks.
Discounted pet meds for the family cat, Ginger? Ginger’s been dead for five years, people.
A Groupon daily deal for me last week was for a discounted sit-down at a restaurant and social club in Carle Place. Seriously, Carle Place. That’s about an hour and 20 minutes away. And this stock sells for how much?
• I was fortunate enough to spend the Thanksgiving holiday and most of the weekend with friends and family. Not only that, the weekend before Thanksgiving, my parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandmother celebrated my grandfather’s 85th birthday party at King Umberto’s in Elmont.
This is the same guy with whom I’ll be heading up to Foxwoods next weekend. I definitely have a lot to be thankful for.
• Congratulations to Miguel Maysonet and the Riverhead Blue, um, Stony Brook Seawolves for their come-from-behind playoff win over Albany in Stony Brook Saturday. Maysonet rushed for 75 yards on 22 carries in the biggest win in school history.
The Seawolves, who played before some 8,300 fans, now hit the road to battle No. 1 Sam Houston State.
• While most of us were shopping or watching football this weekend, Suffolk Times stringer photographer and retired Riverhead teacher John Neely was out on the North Fork capturing images of the changing seasons. If you didn’t catch his slide show, which was posted yesterday, click here now. It will only take another minute of your time, and sometimes it’s nice to take a long break from work — I mean shopping.
