Verify when you'll die

I’m in the mood for classical music so I was searching the Internet for the full version of Ravel’s Boléro. I have found a video with the Russian ballet so I watched. For a moment I looked on the right side of the page and saw a Google ad that draw my attention - title: Verify when you’ll die, second line: Find out the date of your death, how much left for you to live. I imagined immediately the quiz as the web is full of sites that invite you to complete a questionnaire that makes you squeeze your brain as none of the predefined answers apply to you. After a half an hour, when you finish and expect the results they ask you money.

Well, not this time mon cher! For two reasons: 1) I knew what is all about, and 2) the title of the add is too creepy. I mean why would I want to know when I’ll die and moreover why on Earth would I want to verify this?! As if something changed since Eyjafjallajokull started to spit fire like a dragon… If I think for a while it did change something: my flight to München was canceled so that 1% chance to have a plane accident vanished. Yeah, yeah, yeah but I almost cut my hand with the kitchen knife while cooking, job I wouldn’t do if I had flown. So I guess you never know for sure if you are avoiding one trouble or you are getting into another.

So how can you verify that?! Ok, let’s assume that you can verify. Let’s say in a previous quiz I got an age of 78 and I’ll die in the afternoon. Now, I’m more distracted, I don’t really pay attention to the questions and I get an age of 79 and I’ll die in the morning. Well, one whole year! Nice, but if I die in the morning, when all folks are at work who will notice I’m dead? I’ll just lie there until someone comes? And after all who cares as long as I’m dead?! It’s not my business anymore, I don’t have to do anything, others will deal with everything >:)

In this construction, in this context, in this specific ad, verify sounds so morbid that I wouldn’t even consider on clicking the link. In fact just because this particular word was used made me think that I shouldn’t click it. For me the ad had the opposite effect: made me run away. But is this a good thing or a bad one? If you advertize such a quiz would you want me to click on it or not? As a person that already knew the quiz, the probability of becoming a client (to pay for it) is almost zero so you probably don’t want me to click as you have to pay for my click. Do you want me to increase your traffic? Answer with a question: does it worth it?

Even it’s the most repulsive ad I seen so far, it serves well. At least in my case. I wonder what other would think about it.



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