Not the best advertisement for Cafe Nicolia...

Hard Job for Peter to Stand Up So Long

Adverstising Alongside the Information Superhighway

(Image from Wikipedia)

Some individuals will go to a lot of trouble to advertise in counterproductive ways.

A couple of days ago, on my at my blog post of March 21 ("In a moment of mental abstraction..."), someone named 'Pete' -- but registered under the name "Seoul Art" -- posted the following, somewhat telegraphic ad:

Hi, nice site^^ email? Hope you can drop by the gorgeous Cafe Nicolia sometime in Pucheon... (line one) http://www.cafenicolia.com/ Pete

Although annoyed by this and more than a little put off, I decided to give the ad a chance since 'Pete' was advertising something neither offensive nor illegal, so I followed the link to Cafe Nicolia.

Two things at the Cafe Nicolia website annoyed me: 1) the pop-up and 2) the music.

I hate pop-ups. I don't care what they pop up to inform me of. Even if a pop-up were to announce, in all honesty, that I had won a million dollars for being the lucky one-millionth person to view the pop-up, I'd still hate that pop-up.

I love good music, however, and the cafe website's music was good, but I don't like music imposed upon me, and I saw no way to switch the music off, so I had to endure it as I looked around Cafe Nicolia.

Other than raising those two objections, I had nothing negative to say about Cafe Nicolia, so I allowed the comment from 'Pete' to stand, along with my response:

'Pete', this looks like an advertisement, which I usually don't allow, but I'll let this one pass even though you've not commented on my blog entry and give no evidence that you've actually read anything here (so why should I read anything at Cafe Nicolia?).

One suggestion. Include an icon on the Cafe Nicolia site that allows visitors to turn off the music. Although the music was good, I found it loud and distracting while I was trying to read the website.

If the music can't be turned off, I'll never visit Cafe Nicolia again.

Of course, I would have to visit Cafe Nicolia again to hear if 'Pete' had followed my advice and enabled visitors to switch the music off, but I had no strong inclination to find out. My new friend 'Pete' didn't easily give up, for on yesterday's blog entry ("Wikipedia is Good for Academia"), he posted a similar but even more telegraphic ad:

Great site... please visit: http://www.cafenicolia.com/ European cafe in Pucheon

I deleted this ad and explained:

Seoul Art, you've already advertised once on Gypsy Scholar. One time was enough, so the [second] one above has been deleted.

Although these two attempts by 'Pete' at using my blog to advertise Cafe Nicolia are not nearly so egregious as those by a certain 'Celia' who posted ads for bongs and other drug paraphernalia to a couple of my entries on 'drinking' smoke, they are nevertheless annoying and counterproductive.

I'd normally think that people would realize the counterproductiveness of posting ads in this manner, especially since my comments function has been set up to block spam. 'Pete' had to go to the trouble of registering with blogger, entering a name and code, copying down some letters arranged randomly, and then composing a short comment -- yet not once did he pause to muse to himself, "You know, this Gypsy Scholar fellow might have made comments hard to post because he doesn't actually want advertisements on his blog."

On the other hand, maybe it worked. The comment by 'Pete' has spurred me to post this blog entry on Cafe Nicolia, and bad publicity is still publicity...