Sharks can sense a single drop of blood in an Olympic sized pool. Hyenas by the virtue of the lion king and their unfortunate appearance are one of the most hated animals. Leeches are worms that survive by sucking the blood of animals. They are different species, they live in different habitats. But, Guess what’s common between them? Yes they are all carnivores. What else? Something less obvious. All three of them do not kill their prey. They feed on them when their prey is still alive.

Why God did made the snake before lawyers? To exercise.

A popular but illogical joke. I’ll tell you why.

When it comes to comparing professions with a animals, lawyers are compared to snakes. But snakes bite and kill their prey or at least paralyze them before eating them. But an attorney doesn’t do that. Attorneys are leeches, they have to keep their food alive in order to sustain. What more, just like a leech sucking on a buffalo, they have the ability to numb the prey, so that the client doesn’t realize the blood sucking part. Now a days some other professionals are also taking a cue from leeches. For example, doctors in India have been employing different scare mongering tactics to squeeze as much as possible from every patient. So is education industry.

There are some professional scammers out there who are always stalking the group of prey to identify the weakest link. From email to sms to phone calls, these people try to bait people and try to make money of them by offering free treasures to millions in inheritance. Hyenas follow the same rule, identify the weakling and gang up on it.

Recently, i have been seeing a lot of sharks around. Both physical and virtual. The physical ones, set shops in our office building as soon as the salary day comes. The virtual ones have discount sales and offers when ever there is some major/minor calendar event or some times just for the sake of it. These sharks are attracted to our office building by the smell of salary being deposited in our bank accounts.

But there is an another class of predator out there, that I am still struggling to correlate with any thing in the animal kingdom. I guess even Darwin would struggle to classify this species. Perhaps they are a mutation of capitalism. They call themselves Marketing executives. They hound, harass and invade the privacy of everyone. What’s more infuriating is that they do it with a smile on their face.

Just like some types of predators, these people set traps and then they stalk and track their prey. In this digital age this has become a very easy thing to do. It’s now even automated. There are plug and solutions available that can do this for anyone. This is not a new idea, its just an exaggerated implementation of an existing idea. In a street market, have you ever faced a situation where a hawker would leave you alone once you have inquired about his product? For him its expression of interest. Digitization of this concept is the reason why we are in a state where majority of the notifications, emails and SMS we get on our phones are advertisements or other promotions. John Oliver explains to the ridiculous lengths these people go in the name of notifications. The tracking is done through hidden scripts of websites. The website that hosts this blog as 2 such trackers. The company I work for, it’s website has 11 trackers. They do analytics, user data collection and prepare stats for businesses on potential customers and their potential preferences. In the earlier example of the street vendors, the digital equivalent would be that you look at something in a store and the sales guys gets behind you for eternity. I say eternity because unlike the street vendor who leaves when you buy the product or strongly refuse, the internet will never leave you. If you don’t like product A, they have gazillion other things to offer. Also, they share their customers generously with others. I can give you an analogy and its not going to be pretty. Imagine writing your phone number on the photo of a beautiful girl and sticking it in the notice board of your apartment. Almost every guy who sees it will call you. The paper boy, the guy who delivers milk, the security guard, the delivery guy, his friends, friends of his friends.

Now imagine writing your number on a billboard. This is what you did when you gave your phone number to anyone. Weather it be your email provider asking it for extra security, the guy at a billing counter offering redeemable points or the guy who hands you out free lottery draw for exchange of phone numbers or accept to terms and conditions on a app or a website or sign any document when you take a service. In the pretense of selling you something, they want to sell you to the world.

“I laugh at the irony of people screaming out against privacy invasion by governments on twitter and Facebook. The platforms that offered them a chance to look at some memes, videos and probably what their friends had for dinner in exchange for their private information”

– Me

Today I got a call from a person representing my bank. I have a car loan and they were offering me a “top-up” loan on it for the umpteenth time. This was at 12:25 PM. I was so pissed off that I told them that I don’t have a car or an account with them and this was a wrong number. I was just tired of saying no. The most amazing fact about these telemarketers is that the same person never calls you twice, they tell you that they will update their database that you are not interested and then another one will call an hour later. Then exactly at 12:27 PM, I got a phone call from the credit card department offering me an enhanced credit limit. Then I blew my fuse. It then took me 47 minutes to revoke subscriptions from all promotional calls.

Above is an info graphic on the raise in marketing calls in the United States. So, why have we come to a situation where you cannot even live one day of your life without faceless people bothering you?

For example, India has a great many number of prospective customers for all types of businesses. But what they lack is purchasing power. Now, how does one increase the purchasing power? Ideal way is to improve the quality of life, increased wages, better social security, better insurance etc.. there by increasing disposable income and willingness to spend. But, it takes a long time and effort. More importantly willing and efficient governments. Another way is to let people accumulate wealth and then spend it. Lets say you want to buy a car. You can save money for a few years (depending on the car you would like to buy) and then buy it. But some times these few years may become few more years because things like inflation, or unexpected expenses or emergencies. Well, it is good to have some money for the rainy day. Right? But that would mean you buying a car is still an ‘IF’ for the business. So, the bank will give you the loan to buy the car now and then repay it over the same ‘few’ years. That makes you paying them an obligation, not an option. They don’t care for your emergencies, for all they care, if you are already short of money for buying a non-necessary thing, then you will be forced into another loan when you need money. That’s a double win for them.

This is why people in India get so many calls like personal loan inquiries, real estate offers. Types of sales, where you can be put on a leash for a long long time. A common man would be scared of defaulting any loans. Most defaulters are actually people who are inherently wealthy, for them cost of a law suit is much less than the cost of repaying the loan. It is vice-versa for a middle class person. These ‘marketing folk’ are like a mutation in the natural food chain, they create their own prey rather than hunting them. Also, the hunter you see is not he actual predator, like in the case of Ants where the entire colony works for a queen and even hunts and gathers food for the queen. The people who call you or email you get only a miserly bit of the flesh.

May be Jerry Sienfeld foresaw this in 1992. That is why he made the below joke in his show. With all the greedy people out there, the situation will only become worse. We are not in the age of personalized marketing as shown in the minority report. But we are getting there fast.