{"id":314,"date":"2009-07-07T13:28:08","date_gmt":"2009-07-07T13:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/?p=314"},"modified":"2009-07-07T13:28:08","modified_gmt":"2009-07-07T13:28:08","slug":"pyramid-selling-or-plinth-of-thieves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/pyramid-selling-or-plinth-of-thieves\/","title":{"rendered":"Pyramid selling or plinth of thieves?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthony Gormley’s One & Another<\/strong> finally got underway yesterday: 100 days of one hour-long guest spots on the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square where Joe Public can strut his stuff and show off to the massed ranks of sceptical London commuters.<\/p>\n

Well, the event goes on round the clock and when I passed by the plinth at just after 8.30am this morning there wasn’t much of a massed rank to be sure. The occupant at the time was one Barbara Illingworth, 47, described as “retired from Greens Norton, Towcester” and who the Guardian <\/em> said “might just sit and read for an hour in the sun”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, on a chilly <\/strong>July morning, there was no sun and she’d decided to be a litle more constructive with her 4×15 minutes of “fame”.<\/p>\n

When I passed, she was calling for the release <\/strong>of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese human rights campaigner.<\/p>\n

Over the past day, I’ve dropped in from time to time at the official website oneandother.co.uk <\/em> where there is a live streaming camera<\/a> showing the goings on, also 24\/7. It’s been disappointing so far. The highlights for me have been a man drinking Pimms while sheltering from the London rain under his umbrella, to a guy who dressed himself as a dog turd<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

However, my overwhelming feeling so far is that it has just demonstrated who Britain has turned <\/em>from a nation of shopkeepers to a nation of marketeers.<\/p>\n

Examples include the pub-toting town cryer who was booed <\/strong>towards the end of his stint, to the lady in a see-thru packamac right now who is displaying her website URL where, apparently, you can buy “Unique Drawing Paint” (I think), but almost everyone is using their spot to flog something or someone.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time it was just unsolicited emails offering “we give u bIGGGer pen15!” or “V1aggra cheeppp” that we had to be wary off: now it’s tacky infomercials in place of real TV, masquerading self-help websites where every remedy comes at a can’t-last price and endless spammy Twitter posts promising a “sure fire way to make thousandds an hour!”<\/p>\n

That old showman, Phinnaeus T Barnum was famous for saying that there was “a sucker born every minute”: this is obviously the mantra <\/strong>that we are all supposed to chant today. For “sucker” substitute “customer”; or perhaps not.<\/p>\n

Having said all this, I know personally of a guy who is actually raking <\/strong>in more than \u00a32,000 a month via a website which gets more than\u00a0 500 visitors a day, just a few of whom go on to click Google Adsense links.<\/p>\n

Frankly there is nothing worthwhile there, it’s just that the domain is old and it used to be a working site back in the day, before a large competitor bought it out and shut it down. It still floats to the top of the searches for a fairly obvious keyword.<\/p>\n

Yet, with a few tweaks and paying some attention to optimising the scant content there, the suckers<\/span>, er customers keep rolling in.<\/p>\n

My friend is laughing, and I would be too. With all this talk of recession and hard times, something like that would be the equivalent of a nice little pension fund.<\/p>\n

It’s just another example of the proof that PT Barnum was right: there is<\/strong> one born every minute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

However, on a chilly July morning, there was no sun and she’d decided to be a litle more constructive with her 4×15 minutes of “fame”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[466,185,657,27,307,532],"tags":[663,688,678,669,672,695,666,700,681,698,683,697,667,699,694,689,693,673,680,668,696],"class_list":["post-314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-london","category-marketing-madness","category-personal","category-twitter","category-web-freakage","tag-anthony-gormley","tag-aung-san-suu-kyi","tag-campaigner","tag-commuters","tag-illingworth","tag-infomercials","tag-joe-public","tag-london-rain","tag-marketeers","tag-nation-of-shopkeepers","tag-pen15","tag-pimms","tag-plinth","tag-pyramid-selling","tag-real-tv","tag-san-suu","tag-self-help-websites","tag-towcester","tag-town-cryer","tag-trafalgar-square","tag-website-url"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prPSI-54","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1430,"url":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/unaccustomed-as-i-am-to-public-speaking\/","url_meta":{"origin":314,"position":0},"title":"Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking","author":"Max Brockbank","date":"February 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Next Tuesday, at about 3:45pm, of my own free will and accord, I will stand up and subject myself to the biggest professional trial of my adult life. 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I've known many civil servants in my time; personally\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Jobseeking"","block_context":{"text":"Jobseeking","link":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/category\/jobseeking\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1332,"url":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/whats-another-year\/","url_meta":{"origin":314,"position":3},"title":"What’s another year?","author":"Max Brockbank","date":"January 9, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Almost two years ago I signed up for Oh Life, a service which offers you the chance to write a personal private journal about what you did that day. You get a reminder in your inbox every evening at a time to suit -- suggesting \"Just reply to this email\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Day Job"","block_context":{"text":"Day Job","link":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/category\/day-job\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":388,"url":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/climate-change-camp-madness\/","url_meta":{"origin":314,"position":4},"title":"The Brilliant Logic Behind the Climate Change Camp","author":"Max Brockbank","date":"August 27, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The Climate Change Camp is typical of the entire Climate Change lobby: they act like a bunch of moody teenagers. As I write, several dozen well-meaning individuals have positioned themselves in that hotbed of oil company activity, Greenwich Royal Park, to further the cause of Climate Change Activism. They want\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Lewisham"","block_context":{"text":"Lewisham","link":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/category\/lewisham\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317,"href":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions\/317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maxbrockbank.com\/lets-talk-about-me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}