Charity meets Torture

 Charity meets Torture

Trust me- I pondered hard over the choice of the word 'Torture'; deleted it several times to replace it with milder ones but eventually, I concluded that nothing can describe the severity of how Ketto has been harassing me with its advertisements on the internet for the past 2 weeks. Whether I try to open my email inbox, read a news article, login to a social media account or a shopping site, they have ambushed me from all fronts! To top it all, in the middle of accented spanish words, my eyes suddenly meet something familiar and I felt 'see my spanish vocabulary is getting there'- Hola! that was an English advertisement from Ketto on the page of a spanish online newspaper.

All I did to deserve this is that I made a donation on 12 January2022 for a school friend who is in need for a medical treatment through Ketto fund raising platform. It started from Facebook where I saw this Ketto campaign on the wall of a school friend and decided to support. It felt nice when Ketto sent me an email with a certificate as a token of appreciation because I had not expected that. 

The day went by and while I was in the middle of a meeting, I receive a call from an unknown number and it was someone calling me from Ketto to thank me for my contribution. Well, the person intended to talk more about something else but I had to interrupt and disconnect to get back to my meeting with the assurance that Ketto could call me after 8pm. As all over-thinkers do, I did reevaluate my decision to disconnect the call from Ketto that night while trying to sleep and worried what if they wanted to tell me about any another aspect of my friend's health for whom they were running the fund raising campaign. P.S: I disconnect my ph from the internet every night & only reconnect internet after 9am.

0n 13Jan2022, 9am I opened my laptop. I started reading Times of India online & saw an advertisement pleading me to donate after every 4-5 lines of the news article. Anyway, I opened my outlook to check official emails- no, they havent been able to pervade outlook yet- thankGod. Then for some reason I went to youtube and the same advertisement followed me in video format pleading to me to donate. I chanted a prayer in my mind for the good health of the family in the advertisement and moved on.

To get a break from office emails, I open my gmail to check if there is anything that could give me unexpected good news without any context for it and what I find is another email from Ketto. This email encouraged me to Donate on monthly basis and link the donation plan to my bank account. Thereafter, what I did is definition of dumbness- but I did attempt to make monthly donations linked to my bank account but due to some technical glitch, it took time and I had to go back to office emails on outlook where the intellectual beasts were waiting to play with my peace of mind (all readers would relate to this.. barring a few lucky ones). Then I see my whatsapp has a message from Ketto business account saying I left the process of making monthly donation incomplete and there was a photo of a very ill child with her family-making me feel extremely guilty of my failure to finish the process of monthly donations. Nonetheless, office meetings barely allow you the mindspace to observe any personal feeling beyond a couple of minutes and I got back to meetings to blabber and to 'let me share my screen' business.

And on 14 jan2022 almost everything that happened on 13Jan was repeated with the only difference that the family which was making me guilty appearing in the advertisements that ambushed me the other day from all fronts changed and were geared up to make me even more guilty- I would say atleast 3-4 levels up! Then everything that I narrated for14Jan22 was repeated on 15jan, 16Jan, 17........20Jan22 and continues till date.

However 2o Jan22 was the turning point. By then Ketto had harassed me so much that irreversibly changed my mind.

If anything, this is a completely flawed strategy to generate business and it is my message to Ketto management to review this. Atleast, have the common sense about 2 things: i) if a salaried person has made a donation today morning then atleast let that person's next month's salary get credited before you start ambushing her with your appeals to donate the same day in the evening

ii) donation is a noble cause and by harassing the people who have the intention to donate, you are harming no one but the poor people who are in need of these donations.

That said, it also points towards a much grave issue of present-day society woven by the internet and accentuated by COVID-19 pandemic. The sub-conscious acceptance of this complete breach of privacy leveraged by not only Ketto but all these commercial companies. Companies have sold out personal data for profit while we keep being enamored of the technologies because they almost seem like magic- they surprise us and many times we feel special but in reality we should feel foolish. Its baffling to even imagine to what extent internet has invaded our private lives. Of late, despite having lived all alone for more than 15 years, suddenly the invasion of privacy by internet frightens me that someone out there has already profiled me and perhaps is tracking me!! The Social Dilemma is for true. 

by Veena Singh