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The Temptation of George Rusky
by: George Rusky
Greetings, I’m writing to you to share some of my concerns and at the same time, ask you for help. It’s about the Internet. The biggest problem caused by the Internet, as I can see it, is the openness and accessibility to an unlimited amount of information. Naturally, one who can touch a key board at least with one finger, should accept the Internet with all its good and evil as an incredible invention of all times. That’s one side of the coin. Another one is that I’m totally lost in the ocean of online offers; one is more seductive than other. ”The best method of creating your wealth on line…” shouts at us a sales letter. “The most progressive ever way of building your list of subscribers…”hollers another. Tens if not hundreds of messages (most of them, certainly, unsolicited) call us to prosperity on line. I was raised to respect the word written. It’s not only The Constitution , laws of the state, school textbooks, manuals, instructions, notes, you name it! The Bible, of course. I will always remember a notorious question my Pastor used to ask me: ”What is written in the Bible about it?” Looked like for every problem one had ever experienced, Pastor could find the answer in the Bible. In short, the miraculous power of the word, written in my heart, is written ‘in stone.’ Now, when I read the unlimited list of superlative adjectives of sales letters I feel desperate, thriving to find out ‘where the dog is hidden.’ The messages where the writers start saying: ”Don’t you lose this one in your whole life opportunity, etc” I wonder, if one can find a pumpkin, who would wish to lose his one time in his whole life chance? So, I click the link, open the web site and read a special report, nicely formatted, highlighted, emphasized, splashing good news into my face, raping me with ‘order, order, order, and again, order.’ But that’s not all! “If you order before midnight,” it says, “you will sure get tons of bonuses, so don’t tarry!” I move aside from my desk everything, spilling a cup of coffee I was advised to grasp before reading a message, fumbling for my ‘electronic wallet’ and just about to fill in the form… Thanks the Lord, it is still necessary to fill in the form, the last chance to escape the hypnotic daze of the sales letter, cool down, and recover from the fog of a ‘narcotic’ power of the commercial offer. Uff, sweating and shivering, I regain consciousness, trying to think about something else and put off the hanging above me horrendous cloud of doubt: ”What if this is that one chance from a thousand , which just come only to bold and smart individuals, who, after just a few months report to us: ”I come back to gloomy days of the winter 200? when I didn’t have any money to pay the bills, to do this and that, etc, unless I met John Smith who showed me the big picture… so now my life has completely changed. Look at my house, I bought a week ago and a new car I’m thinking of buying, and, so on.” To resist this temptation is next to impossible... With my last effort, I press my right hand so that not to click the desirable link taking me to the treasures island where money grows on the trees and one can experience joy and gladness because one blessed day she clicked this miraculous link! Paradise lost? No, Mr John Milton, Paradise found… Instead of an epilog. After nearly four years of trying to find a ‘Magic formula’ for getting rich on the Internet, I’m still where I was last century. “If I could do it, you can too…” “Can I?”
About The Author George Rusky 23 years of experience of educating and consulting people in the area of English for Business Communication, the author of several publications on writing, reading, business relations, education. Last eight years a resident of Prague, the Czech Republic. To read more, e-mail georgerus@volny.cz Or go to http://georgeruskyconsultancy.blogspot.com
This article was posted on December 08, 2005

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