Classic Come-Ons

Jenny Cool just alerted me to a great "list of links to fake sites the Federal Trade Commission has made to warn people of fraudulent marketing. If you click through to buy or learn about any of the offers, you get a page warning you against such scams." The FTC's page at http://www.wemarket4u.net contains rhetorical appeals to a range of consumer desires for fast cash, get-rich-quick schemes, eternal youth and virility, cyber security, and a host of "EZ" conveniences. At last, a branch of the federal government that seems to understand the discourse practices of the World Wide Web! Unlike the State Department or the White House, the FTC seems to have actually employed computer users with working Internet connections, who might be aware that it's information literacy that's important for officials to provide rather to the public rather than more public relations hype and kiddie pages, even for grown ups.

According to "Grift.gov" at The Wilson Quarterly, the site was developed with the appropriately named Lesley Fair, who also does work about the deceptive advertising of consumer electronics.

Also in the Quarterly was an article entitled "Globalization 3.0" that asserts "If we can identify a single moment when the Western-dominated Globalization 2.0 gave way to Globalization 3.0, it may have been when China acceded to WTO membership." The use of the 2.0 and 3.0 labels for terms other than the World Wide Web is sort of fascinating to me in a hypothetical study of analogical reasoning, particularly for describing diplomatic networks that beg the question of how the "user" in international relations is being situated.