One more reason not to sweat the robot takeover
by Doc Searls Thursday, February 22, 2018

Long ago a high school friend wanted to connect through Classmates.com. We fell out of touch, but Classmates did not. It kept spamming me with stuff about my long-dead high school until I got it, somehow, to stop.

Now I just got a mail from Classmates.com tempting me to know more about a classmate of mine from "Calabasas Academy Calabasas, CA Attended ’95-’99." Classmates' marketing robot calls me Jim and has a mailbox for me (see the image to the right) containing three promotional emails from itself.

My high school was at the other end of the country, and I graduated in 1965.

I also just checked, and I'm not even sure Calabasas Academy exists. (There is an all-female academy of dance, but no Academy.) 

I only bring this up to highlight for the zillionth time how much marketing robots suck at guessing not only what people might want, but even who they are and what they've done in the world, even when the person being guessed at is fully exposed online. 

Mazing, that.