I wasn't visiting his site to benefit from his content. I am not one of his customers, or readers, or viewers. I loaded up his site for the sole purpose of being able to point to things on it and say, "these are great and you have done a good job". Publicly.
Instead the site threw a barrier up in front of me and forbid me from proceeding at all until I gave it an email address. It went a step beyond all of the goddamnproliferatingeverywherenow lightboxes that more and more sites seem to be using lately: there was no close box, no "cancel", no "no thanks not this time". Just, "give me your email address or go away."
The day that that particular tactic is no longer considered rude and inconsiderate and Bad will be the day that I'll be done with the internet.
Believe me when I say that I was way more polite in my comment about it than my initial visceral response to it.
...Or am I not allowed to call him out on a bad move just because he's Andrew Frickin' Warner and "has put an incredible amount of effort into" Mixergy?
So it's rude and inconsiderate that he's asking for your contact info (or for fake contact info) before he gives you all his material for free? That seems more than fair. He doesn't owe you anything.
Would you mind pointing out what he gave me? Because I can't seem to find it. Thanks.
I would try a less snarky way to say, "he didn't give me anything", except that I already said that and you ignored it in your personal quest to annoy me.
Mixergy gives away hundreds of interviews for free via their podcast feed (I subscribed via iTunes and my iPhone podcatcher, search for Mixergy), and transcripts of the interviews are still available via Google search. I'm not a fan of the pushy email signup, but there's ways around it to get to the free content.
And there's definitely some great interviews on Mixergy. The most recent one I listened to was with the female CEO of a hardware company that builds spectral analysis devices for the oil & gas industry and US Defence Department. That's worlds away from the online eBook info-product market.
Instead the site threw a barrier up in front of me and forbid me from proceeding at all until I gave it an email address. It went a step beyond all of the goddamnproliferatingeverywherenow lightboxes that more and more sites seem to be using lately: there was no close box, no "cancel", no "no thanks not this time". Just, "give me your email address or go away."
The day that that particular tactic is no longer considered rude and inconsiderate and Bad will be the day that I'll be done with the internet.
Believe me when I say that I was way more polite in my comment about it than my initial visceral response to it.
...Or am I not allowed to call him out on a bad move just because he's Andrew Frickin' Warner and "has put an incredible amount of effort into" Mixergy?