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What I Love About Ricochet: No $exting
@blueyeti promised us in Ricochet’s recent Focus Group that “We also do not sell your email addresses or anything else to third parties even though we get asked about it on a regular basis.” As testimony to how good Yeti’s promise is, let me share what happened right after I subscribed to some other well-known right-wing outlet (which shall remain nameless) just this fall. I’ve been a Ricochet member for years. And for years, the partisan demands on my money have been negligible. Few emails, no texts. Life was good. Then, I signed up at that other right-wing outlet:
Now random politicians won’t stop $exting me. You know what I’m talking about. $exting. Those endless texts demanding money, burning up your phone faster than you can block them. Various personas claiming to be “Newt” or “Mitch” or “Scalise” take credit for sending them, though it’s hard to imagine the sender as anyone other than some pitiable peon of a staffer or intern, unhappily grinding out the wheedling that’s below everyone else’s pay grade.
Is it the end of the year? Then that’s as good an excuse as any to demand your money:
(SLF) URGENT: The LAST major fundraising deadline of the year is approaching & Mitch McConnell NEEDS your help TODAY. EXPRESS DONATE HERE:
Beginning of the year? Same dang thing:
(SLF) OFFICIAL: It’s 2020 & Mitch McConnel needs YOU to help him start the year strong! GIVE NOW to help Mitch fight radical Democrats:
You’ll get $ext after $ext reminding you each time that now is positively your last chance:
Jim Jordan, Newt, Stefanik & Scalise all asked. Your LAST AND FINAL CHANCE to defend Trump from impeachment with a 5X-MATCH ends in 3 HOURS
Spoiler: It wasn’t my last and final chance. It never is.
At some point, all this official urgency is bound to escalate into ransom demands:
(SLF ABC XYZ LBGTQWERTY) URGENTEST OFFICIAL EMERGENCY URGENT!!!: Real Americans DESPISE all WASHED UP, WEENIE DEMS like ANTHONY WEINER. NOW is your last chance to STOP FUTURE WEINERS IN THEIR TRACKS. DONATE TODAY or we will text you ALL Weiner’s HOTTEST D**K PICS. DON’T SAY YOU WEREN’T WARNED.
Fortunately, the $exts promising something in return are usually more enticing than that. More, ah, carrot than stick (ugh!). T-shirts. Mugs. Hats. Wrapping paper.
Yes, wrapping paper. To the $exters’ credit, the Trump wrapping paper offered to me dozens of times throughout the pre-Christmas season was pretty classy — I suppose as classy as any wrapping consisting of one name repeated over and over again can be. Its graphic design was well-balanced, the color selection, tasteful. I still don’t know what regular Americans would use the wrapping for, but just like Chinese characters look stylish enough for gweilos to use them as decoration without really knowing what they mean, someone who didn’t read Roman characters might find the wrapping paper equally pleasing.
That said, the offers of $exting $wag seem a bit unimaginative overall. How many hats, mugs, and shirts could one ordinary donor need? They should mix it up a little. Of all the $exts I got during the House impeachment vote, I’m a bit miffed I didn’t get this one:
URGENT ALERT: House DEMONRATS voted to impeach today. This is an OUTRAGEOUS outrage. Our databanks show you haven’t expressed your outrage in COLD HARD CA$H yet. But it’s not too late! Show you STAND WITH TRUMP with this CLASSY outrage tiki mask:
My parents were hardly slouches when it came to right-wing partisanship. Thanks to them, I got all my talk-radio-listening out of my system while I was still growing up. Still, they detested partisan demands for money as exploitative and crass. Who do these pols think voters are, they wondered, cash cows to be milked at every opportunity? The growling consignment of Republican fundraising demands to File 13 became a family ritual. Who am I to mess with family tradition?
So, dear Republican operatives, if you really want me to donate someday, would you please for the love of all that is holy stop $exting me? Every $ext curdles the milk of my partisan kindness just that little bit more. And thanks, Ricochet: I know the $exts aren’t your fault.
Published in General
While I have given more money to Republicans this cycle (I just maxed out at $2,800 to Bill Weld), I use ActBlue to contribute to non-Socialist Dems. Any and every Dem can use ActBlue; by contrast the Republican websites will not tolerate any dissent against Trump.
ActBlue has never sold my name to anyone. The Dems are ahead of us on this one. Also, ActBlue has raised over $1.3 Trillion since 2004.
Dan Lipinski, IL-3 is one of only two Democrats who is urging the SCOTUS to reverse Roe v. Wade. If any Dem deserves your money, it would be him. (He is in a bullet-proof District; his Republican opponent last time was a Holocaust Denier.) Pro-Choice Dems are gunning for him. I suggest that you give him a dollar to see how well organized ActBlue is.
If memory serves, ActBlue did not request my phone number. I am not shilling for Dems. My point is that if the Dems can do something right, why can’t we?
You’re a good man to offer your services in this way, Z.
For a while, you had me anxiously waiting by my cell phone – that is, until I saw the “S” was really “$”.
We’re fortunate we rarely get spam on our cell phones, but our land line is a different story.
Spam on our land line primarily consists of three types:
The NRCC robocalls are the worst offenders. They’ve called as late as ten PM, often several times a day. We actually ran out of room to block on our home phone, because those SOBs seem to have an endless supply of numbers to call from (assuming they’re real numbers). We finally broke down and bought gadget with 10,000 built in, known robocall numbers (I’m talking to you, Rachel from card services!), and the capability to block a near infinite amount of numbers. Works like a champ so far.
As for sexting, I’m waiting for Max’s response to my request to add the feature to Ricochet . . .
A good man. But unconvincing. He forgot to add that now is positively absolutely and he’ll promise my utterly last chance to take advantage of his tender generosity.
*clears throat*
Some of us could do with a little excitement in our lives. (801) 915-2224
@dong, you are right to blame WinRed. I haven’t ever used WinRed for anything, but I seem to have been gifted a “complimentary” 2019 membership anyhow. Which I let lapse, it not being something I asked for in the first place. And now that it is lapsed…. hoo boy!
The texts won’t stop. They come from different numbers each time, since they know you’ll block ’em. Here’s the two latest:
From (844) 793-8315:
From (844) 914-1402:
Fundraisers’ excuse is that these are just “peer-to-peer” (P2P) texts. And I suppose they are, in that one poor miserable schlub* is responsible for texting the other poor miserable schlubs.
* even if the poor miserable schlub sending the text is a bot, it’s still one poor miserable schlub of a bot
I didn’t. My best guess is credit-card payment for a literary subscription (which shall remain nameless) came with the phone number bundled in and got passed along to WinRed without my knowledge or consent.
WinRed, you’re stalking me after the breakup when we never even dated!