An Open Letter To OpenZurich 2022-10-06

The Background

As amazing as it seems, snork.ca isn't the only massively popular web site I run. I also happen to be the Snork who runs dnscrypt.ca. Last night I received an email from Ralf Engelbert <ralf@openzurich.com> at my dnscrypt.ca administrative email address. It said:

Hi there,

We're currently working on behalf of a major industry-leading client trying
to enhance their brand via editorial content targeting the Canadian Market.

Whilst looking for opportunities, we came across your website dnscrypt.ca

Please let us know the pricing and options to place sponsored content on
your website.

We can provide you with a high-quality piece of content, fitting your
website audience. We'll include citations and images, so as to make the
content naturally resonate with your readers.

Furthermore, if you are interested in publishing sponsored content
on websites/blogs owned by your company, please send us more details with
the below info:

- Website URLs
- Pricing
- Linking restrictions (Nofollow etc)
- Any restrictions about the content or outgoing links

Please let me know and we can get something started.

Best Regards,

So... a few things stood out at me in this message.

1. It doesn't address me by name
2. There is no name after the "Best Regards,"
3. "a high-quality piece of content" is a strange phrase
4. "make the content naturally resonate with your readers" is kind of creepy
5. Ralf does not seem to know whether my website is a blog or not

The Open Letter

Dear Ralf,

I have never heard of your company and I have never opted-in to your shitty mailing list. I think that advertising, marketing, SEO, branding, target markets, targeted advertising, and sponsored content are all signs that you are a whore who values money over everything else. Whilst I am flattered that you would think my insignificant hand-crafted and javascript-free site is the product of a well funded company, I am disappointed that you would think that a grouchy old man who self-funds encrypted public DNS servers would give a shit about your scummy services. Seriously, I don't see much difference between what you do and Sakawa Boys.

Fuck off,

Hello Ralf.

I should note that the original message from Ralf was edited slightly to remove the unnecessary whitespace and switch the fancy quotes to regular ones.