stealth advertising

How Much Is Instagram Verification Worth On The Black Market?

How Much Is Instagram Verification Worth On The Black Market?

Here in the social media era, everyone is a brand — but some more than others. Verified “influencers” on social media platforms can make a pretty penny selling access to their influence… and so it perhaps is unsurprising that the ability to influence is, itself, a hot commodity you can buy. [More]

Chris Thomas From DirecTV Moved To AT&T, Still Sends Ads Disguised As Greeting Cards

Chris Thomas From DirecTV Moved To AT&T, Still Sends Ads Disguised As Greeting Cards

Have you received a card from your favorite cousin Chris Thomas lately? All humans are cousins if you go back far enough, after all, and Chris is the public face of DirecTV convincing customers to open mail by disguising it as a greeting card, or some kind of personal mail that you’d actually want to open. [More]

Sony Stealth Sucks

Sony Stealth Sucks

There’s an excellent entry up over at Scatterbox detailing Sony’s perfidious scum-suckery (ed – penultimate ‘s’ chipperly added because The Consumerist is, at heart, a family publication). First: the spyware and malware they surreptitiously installed on the computers of thousands of people who had actually bothered to buy their CDs; then, vandalizing other people’s property so they could tattoo their rainbow corporate swastika in public places on somebody else’s dime. These guys are sleazy enough that a mere push would send them in a frictionless glide right across the pit full of jagged glass bottles and honey consumers would like to roll them in.