“We place considerable value on messages that are addressed to us personally, and we are good at distinguishing between messages meant for us individually…and those meant for people like us…”

We place considerable value on messages that are addressed to us personally, and we are good at distinguishing between messages meant for us individually (like love letters) and those meant for people like us (like those coming from late-night preachers and pitchmen). An entire industry, direct mail, sprang up around trying to trick people into believing that mass messages were really specifically addressed to them personally. Millions of dollars have been spent on developing and testing ways of making bulk advertisements look like personal mail, including addressing the recipient by name and printing what looks like handwritten memos from the nominal sender.

Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (New York & London: Penguin Books, 2008), 87-88.