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Data Mining And Easy Credit Will Save America!

Hamilton Nolan · 10/22/08 08:27AM

How did all those shady mortgage companies get America's finances all fucked up in the first place? By using the freakish amount of publicly available data about all of our lives to target those people who were the most needy, vulnerable, and ignorant, and reel them into unsustainable debt. Now that everything is screwed up, how are financial companies going to pull us out of this mess? The exact same way! Data mining is going just as strong as ever, and all these credit card and loan companies are really trying to bring in new customers now that their last round of customers have all gone bankrupt. Even the big credit rating firms like Equifax and Experian make huge money slicing up all of the information they have on everyone, classifying us into little demographic groups, and selling it to third parties who can then send disturbingly well-targeted (or just disturbing, period) pitches. One woman got dozens of credit card offers congratulating her on recently emerging from bankruptcy. Other people get letters from random companies that show how much the balance is left on their own home mortgage. Someone should be punched for this. Possibly these people:

Fake Vintage Ads: Viagra From The Past

Hamilton Nolan · 04/04/08 11:32AM

Everybody loves vintage ads, because they're all old and weird-looking with funny language and whatnot. The drawback is, you can never buy the products in them. Well now that problem has been solved! Spooftastic Photoshop wizardry website Worth1000 sponsored a contest for fake vintage ads of current products. In a servicey move, we've culled the entire list down to the five best: Girls Gone Wild, Jagermeister, cell phones, Viagra, and laser hair removal—in the old school style—after the jump.