How to Ruin Yahoo E-Mail

I confess. I'm a rookie. My title is deceptive. I don't really know how to ruin e-mail. That would take experts like aol and hotmail who have made theirs so unworkable that the rats are daily jumping off the sinking ship. So I'll merely look at what Yahoo is doing to ruin their own e-mail, aol and hotmail apparently being their role models.

Even the most brain dead web surfer notices something odd about Yahoo headlines-- how what they call news is not news, how snarky they are, nearly incomprehensible, and most of all how they contain zero information. They will say something like, "The 3 things that help you lose weight" and never mention even one. Why? Because they're only there to make you click on the link and get to the advertising pages. They are only meant to push buttons so you'll click links.

This is, of course, deceptive, but it's nothing new. On newspapers, the headline writer is a higher editor than the reporter who writes the story, and reporters often hate what the HL writer writes. Also that they get more money. Yahoo apologetically calls itself the best free e-mail. They might like to just say "the best e-mail" but they'd much rather take out the "free". Since they can't, they must find other ways to hold their customers hostage, and they do. Since the headlines are only there to get you angry, there's no limit to how stupid they can be. Their "writers" need no fact checking, and rely on "recent polls" to give these fantasies some imagined clout. Knowing this, only an idiot would ever click on one and give them the satisfaction of showing that statistic to potential advertisers. I clicked one once, and wasn't surprised by the snarky tone and complete lack of factual information in the "story", which seems like a good word for their "news".

No one but Valley Girls and air-headed celebrities goes around saying OMG! but Yahoo has been so misled by their consultants as to actually claim the title. This enables their gossip "writers" --I choke on that title-- to pass judgement on models on the runway. As if they don't have enough problems with their divorces, the lure of tawdry baubels, unscrupulous clients, and the rumor mill known as the Internet, without everything they do being scrutinized under a microscope, probably by people themselves not known for any fashion sense. I'd like to see these models pronounce on Yahoo's "writers" instead-- "Oh my dear, where did you get that tent? At Walmart? And puce is not your color." 

Who else would think it's news to beat down the losing presidential candidate when their own has already won? Never mind that the scrutiny of their so-called reporting never seems to extend to the highest office in the land, and the only way Hilary Clinton can get mentioned is by wearing the wrong dress. Anyone with an ounce of sensibility finds this simply distasteful. The "writers" seem to all be post-moderns, for whom knowledge is literally power, and nothing else. It's only something to beat people over the head with. It requires no context, and fortunately doesn't even have to be "true", a word post-moderns are loath to use.  It seems incredible that they can think they are objective, that their ulterior motives remain ulterior, and their hidden agendas hidden. Which they don't.

Yahoo and its e-mail are following the worst examples on the Internet, cable, and in advertising. The reason is they don't understand how media works. And they think they do. They've been convinced they're doing well by their million dollar consultants. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Get on with the smoke and mirrors." Or go the Mac way of Steve Jobs. Make it smaller, cleaner, more aesthetic, more human, easier, better. But you can't until you understand media. To see what not to do, go to Pandora or You Tube. You need to know, Toyota, that that ad they make me watch before I can go to my song or video has made me hate you and I will never buy your cars. You need to know that this is anti-advertising, regardless of what they put on their powerpoint sales charts. Your Mad Men are making us hate you.

Yahoo has the tackiest ads imaginable, not counting hotmail and aol, the worst being ones that move choppily as examples of the worst in animation. What do you expect? Did you think free e-mail was free? Yes I did. Because if you had some integrity,Yahoo, you'd get your karma back in good ways. It would mean something to you if you were Steve Jobs that you did a good job. And if it doesn't, I don't want any part of your tawdry e-mail. I certainly want to take all the "news" off my Y page that you make me go to in order to check my groups, the pages of which are already barraged with adverts. I can only hope that the next time someone says they have the best free e-mail, it's truly free.