To be bluntly honest, when I was presented with the email we
had to analyze, the initial thought in my brain was simply, “Spam.” But as I
have read from some other bloggers, I’m not the only one. It is almost even
obvious that this email was not written by Barack Obama, and also, that this
email came from a very credible source. First thing I noticed was the subject
of the email at the top: “Hey.” Now, I may never have met a president, and
probably never will, but I’m pretty sure they don’t just walk up to someone,
whether they know them or not, and say “Hey.” At least, we don’t expect that
from someone holding the highest governing office in the United States. Another
thing, the greeting was rather disappointing as well. “Friend,” shouldn’t be
the standard greeting from the President, the one person whose general
salutation towards is “Mr. President.” Also, the email asks for a donation of
three dollars or more. Now where did they come up with $3 being the minimal
amount? That sounds pretty odd to me. The main thing that made me even laugh
was the idea that out of the blue, Barack Obama would sit down and write an
email to Ms. Jarmer asking for a donation- (not that Ms. Jarmer isn’t an
important person). My father makes this joke every time he comes back after
being somewhere for a couple of hours: “Did the president call me today?” Oh
dad… please stop. Because in all honesty, do we really expect the President,
let alone any governing body, to take the time to send an email or make a
simple phone call?
This email is definitely amusing and misleading. Some people
could actually believe that the president has sent them a letter. We know after
a quick analysis that this is simply not so. Most likely, the email is either
computer generated, or actually made by a human and sent out in a mass similar
to spam mail. If I were the president and knew this were happening, I would
stop and actually make the email sound more convincing. The donation part of
the email could very well be true, but we aren’t going to believe it from a
person who puts it in a simplistic email. Clearly whoever wrote this email or
decided to have it generated, did not take these matters into consideration.
Some people are more difficult to convince that they should take their time,
and money, and invest into their “deadline” of sorts. Sounds like college
students aren’t the only ones who need to learn of the importance of ‘rhetorical
situations.’
Amanda W.
Amanda W.
Word Count (444)
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ReplyDeleteLike you, when Ms. Jarmer first handed me a copy of the e-mail from “Barack Obama” I thought that it was spam. It didn’t seem like a legit e-mail at all. I also agree the way that Ms. Jarmer was addressed in the e-mail was not appropriate. We all know that her and the president are not friends so why in the e-mail it says “hey” and refers to them as friends just strikes me as a little weird. I didn’t think about it when I was reading the e-mail, but after reading your post it does seem a little weird to me also that they would come up with $3. It makes me wonder if there is a reason behind it or if they just randomly chose it. I also agree with what you said in saying that the president should revise the e-mail and make it more believable. I think that if he did that then maybe more people would actually take the time to donate.
ReplyDeleteI one hundred percent agree with you. The president emailing Ms. Jarmer is very unrealistic to me, its slim to none. I honestly believe whom ever sent this email out is a fake. Its a huge scam to get money. Also the person who pretended to be Barack did a poor job very unprofessional. You never start the email off as hey and use "friend" Being the President of The Unites States you would think the email would sound very professional. Also in my opinon anyone who fell for this is silly. I agree with you about the donation. You need to donate three dollars by Midnight what kind of nonsense is that. In reality the President is not going to send out a random email to a person asking for a donation. He has all the money in the world to do whatever he wanted. The dontation for. This is email was a huge scam to get your credit card number and your three dollars. I enjoyed reading your blog. The president of the United states would never send out a short little email asking for money. Especially being very unprofessional.
ReplyDeleteI consider spam anything that is just a waste of my time reading it and I usually just disregard it all together. Although this email resembles spam I would most likely read it because it is formatted in such a personal way. It would lead me to believe that a friend of mine has emailed me and I would open without a second thought. I think it is a clever way to disguise this as spam. It is still spam nonetheless, but it is clever spam. I also don’t think anything in this email was random. It looks as if they did extensive studies to determine the best way to get the most amount of money from this as possible. The $3 seems strange at first, but if it was only $1 I would dismiss it immediately, the odd amount leads you to be more intrigued as to why it is $3. Although emailing someone in this format may lead to offending others, I bet they did a study or something of that nature to determine if recipients were more willing to donate if it is in this format. It may be spam, but due to it being so short every word serves a distinct purpose to draw the reader into donating when they otherwise wouldn’t.
ReplyDelete- Codie Rome (216 words)
Thank you all for your comments. I like knowing what ideas your brains produce. (:
ReplyDelete