Laughing at the offensive PR emails we get: Part 2

Transcript

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I’m here with my spouse Royce. Together we are The Ace Couple, and surprisingly to me, because time is meaningless these days, it has been a hot minute since we have done a little tour through our bad PR inboxes. So I think we’re long overdue.

Courtney: We don’t quite have anything, I think, as interesting as smart cock rings this time, but we do have a couple of doozies, so grab a snack and have a laugh with us.

Royce: I don’t always open these anymore, so some of these might be a surprise for me.

Courtney: I already deleted the ones that were like bad and boring, but of course my favorite ones are always the one where in the back of my head. If I was pettier, yes, I would have you on the podcast and you would have a bad time. But we’re not going to do that. Some of these folks do not deserve to be platformed, even if it’s to pull the rug out from under them and tell them off.

Courtney: Specifically, this one. Just like we did in our previous episode like this, I’m going to refrain from saying the actual names of the companies or the actual names of the product. And if any of you out there think you know what company or product we are talking about, I’d encourage you to not mention it in the comments or speak about it, because the goal is to laugh at how woefully misguided all of these people are by landing in our inbox. It’s not to actually get the word out about them existing.

Royce: No free marketing.

Courtney: No free marketing, only free laughs. So our first bad PR email to cover today was brought to us with the subject line, a Fashion Insider’s warning for LGBTQ Families. What could this possibly be about?

Courtney: Is it a hot new summer trend? What does the fashion insider have to say? Well, turns out nothing about fashion, and actually nothing about LGBTQ families either. There is a CEO of a totally unrelated tech company who was formerly in the fashion and entertainment media landscape, who at some point along the line became a father. And that made him question what kind of content culture he’d helped normalize, and what happens when that same culture reaches kids through their phones.

Courtney: Now, as per usual with these requests, they reference a random episode that we recently released. And they say, that episode really stuck with me.

Royce: I can’t remember if we mentioned this the last time we did an episode like this, but increasingly so, a lot of these marketing emails seem to be automated, where they will just pull whatever is recent on your public profile and mention it in a sentence and then go on to say something completely unrelated.

Courtney: Yeah, sometimes they try a little harder than others to actually show us the parallel, and it’s normally a very thin line that they draw. Sometimes it’s completely irrelevant.

Courtney: In this case, they’re like, oh yeah, what struck me about your episode was that you have an audience navigating identity, visibility, and mental health. And here’s where the CEO of this company who used to be in fashion and entertainment can have a conversation centered on parents’ rights and responsibility to guide what enters their children’s phones. Because according to this tech company, the average child is first exposed to pornography at age 11, mostly through a cell phone.

Courtney: So what is this company? Well, it’s a Christian cell phone carrier? Specifically Christian.

Courtney: And they want to help families block harmful content, including pornography, at the network level before it reaches their children’s device. Which of course they have to add in an email to us. This tells me they at least like, kind of, maybe a little bit know what our suspicions would be when this lands in our inbox. They specifically said after, we’re a Christian wireless company, quick clarification, we do not block LGBT or trans content by default. We give subscribers optional controls and don’t impose one standard on every user.

Courtney: So will you have the CEO on your podcast for an interview?

Royce: The LGBT or trans is funny.

Courtney: Yep. Also, a fashion insider’s warning for LGBTQ families. Like, none of this is about LGBTQ families, actually. You’re looking for Christian families.

Courtney: So of course, I did go to their website, because if they had to put a line in an email to us saying, we don’t block LGBT or trans content by default, that made me go, hmm, I bet you do. And lo and behold, I went to their FAQs, and there is a Q that is apparently FA’d, uh, that says, does the sexuality category include LGBTQ+ gender identity or related topics?

Courtney: And they said, yes! Exclamation point. We are committed to content that supports the biblical view of identity, sexuality, and family.

Royce: We’ve heard those words before.

Courtney: Fuck right out of here. This Christian US mobile carrier also, in their FAQs, state that they use an Israeli cybersecurity company. They allude to porn consumption as being an addiction, which is not a thing. And also they have a referral program so that once you get set up on Christian Mobile Carrier, all of your friends can too. And I am sure, because I have read this little excerpt to a couple of our Christian friends and they have all had the same response, which is overdramatic eye roll and groan. It’s called their discipleship program.

Courtney: Refer 12 friends you care about and want to protect and receive 12 months of free mobile service. Your friends can then refer 12 more people each, protecting them while earning a year a free service as well.

Courtney: Just like Jesus did. Now even better, we did get a series of follow-up emails from them with different subject lines. Uh, this one for example says, safer same-sex dating tech your listeners need. Where’s the dating tech?

Royce: Yeah, the body of that email doesn’t even attempt to link to the headline.

Courtney: No, they are just straight up bait and switching. And then still in everyone saying like, quick clarification, we don’t block LGBT stuff, except when we do.

Royce: Oh, I was scrolling through trying to find another one worthy of calling out and a headline jumped out to me.

Courtney: Can’t wait to see which one.

Royce: It’s called I’m Doing It With a Werewolf: How AI is Rewriting Human Desire. And somehow in the first couple of sentences it goes from a relatively recent rise in like monster or other like non-human erotica, then transitions to the poll of women saying they’d rather meet a bear alone in the woods than a man, which was under a very different circumstance.

Courtney: Yeah, I’d almost like to give the writer of this email the benefit of the doubt in knowing that that is a different scenario and that they just wrote this unfortunately, but it really does jump from women’s erotica is overrun with werewolves, fae, and monsters, a third of women said they’d rather meet a bear alone in the woods than a man.

Royce: You could set up a bingo card for this email. The next sentence is young people are having less sex than ever, then men are disappearing into a loneliness epidemic.

Courtney: Oh no, won’t someone think of the young people who are not having enough sex? It’s not as if we’ve talked about how talking points like that are horribly problematic, actually, repeatedly on this very podcast.

Courtney: I also, I genuinely, the sentence that comes right after that, I need a translator for. I have— what does that mean?

Royce: Which one? Oh, what part are you confused by?

Courtney: All of it.

Royce: And somewhere in Medellín, a woman is going down on a haptic dildo connected to the internet while a man in Peoria feels every single movement of her mouth on his body in real time. What, what threw you there?

Courtney: All of it. What is, what is happening there?

Royce: There are internet-connected sex toys now.

Courtney: Terrible.

Royce: They’ve been around for a while.

Courtney: So this is someone being billed to us as an intimacy expert. Definitely founder of a couple companies, at least. Welcome to the agentic era of sexuality. The machines are learning our most intimate signals, and human desire will never be the same.

Royce: Yeah, this email is just a smattering of existing tech or ideas, products that already exist. Uh, one of the emails that we read out on our last video like this is effectively called out by erection tracking rings in here as a device that exists.

Courtney: Yeah, and it talks about like, oh, AI companions and AI toys and stuff, and like if people haven’t gotten the memo by now that I hate both sex and AI, I don’t know what to tell ya. Putting them both together is a nightmare. No, I actually really, really don’t want to talk to you about connecting those two things.

Courtney: Then they, of course, in— as is customary with emails like this, they make the promise that, uh, by having this expert on our podcast, they will cross-promote with, you know, sharing the episode with over half a million people that are subscribed to their newsletter. And I’m just gonna say, if you’re making claims that you’ve got over 500,000 people in an email subscriber newsletter, don’t also link me to your Facebook page. That has like every single post you make just has like six likes on it.

Courtney: Because why would I believe you? If you have over 10 times the number of subscribers we do on YouTube, but your average video is getting like a tenth of our listens when we don’t even have social media to cross-post or advertise to anymore. I don’t believe that those are even real subscribers.

Courtney: Knock it off, sexperts. Okay, so here’s another one where we kind of have to go to this alleged expert’s website in order to see the full scope of how bad this pitch is.

Courtney: Uh, this subject was Transform Your Love Life This February. With this guidebook that I wrote about loving. It’s a very mid email. It’s a psychologist, it’s a psychoanalyst. I help people love better. I have so many clients I’ve helped love better. You should talk to me about this book I wrote about just that.

Courtney: And upon visiting this guy’s website, there is a blog with some featured titles. And one of the featured titles that stuck out to me was, I think my husband is Gay? So of course I had to read that. And I promptly stopped reading as soon as I got to the line, the person ends up leaving his marriage for a homosexual lifestyle. Next.

Royce: Hmm, these are kind of all over the place. I’m clicking through a few emails here. Most of them are kind of boring enough to not be worth reading. I did find one that went particularly hard in on like getting ChatGPT to write the email specifically for the description that is on our website or something.

Royce: But then on, on the other side of things, we have this one here that says that our channel stood out because of our dedication behind fitness performance and the lifestyle that surrounds it.

Courtney: Oh yeah, wait, don’t tell me that was the one trying to get us to like sell whey protein powder.

Royce: Yes.

Courtney: Uh, when we are famously vegans.

Royce: Yeah, there was one email we got that was basically about a product that is like Date Night in a Box, and they have like different themed things that range from date night poker to a little anniversary box to like a very basic BDSM kit and whatnot. But in the email, the first paragraph— we must have gotten this email right after releasing the video on Generation, the TV show— and the first paragraph in the email was like, the way that you unpacked the character who was an ace teenager finding herself was truly engaging. It’s heartbreaking that we won’t hear the rest of the story because of the show’s cancellation.

Courtney: Heartbroken. I am devastated.

Courtney: Now about this, uh, date night box that we sell, which by the way includes things like blindfolds and sex toys. And lingerie. Like, oh well, asexuality is canceled, time to get sexy. I’m heartbroken anyway.

Courtney: Oh my gosh, they have boxes that are literally like kits for seven minutes in heaven or spin the bottle and all of the allo sex games that we have consistently instantly made fun of or commented on.

Royce: I didn’t click into all of their little packages, I just saw a couple of them.

Courtney: There is an empty glass bottle with a label that says spin the bottle on the empty glass bottle in one of these boxes, but then it says just the two of you, a bottle to spin, and no rules.

Royce: Wait, by playing a game like spin the bottle, aren’t you explicitly establishing rules?

Courtney: How do you play spin the bottle with only two people?

Royce: I feel like it’s a lot of the bottle pointing in between you two and be like, oh wait, gotta, gotta spin it again.

Courtney: Do you have to kiss the dresser? Like, what, what is this two-person spin the bottle?

Royce: Date night suddenly turns into an IRL version of the video game Date Everything.

Courtney: Date Everything. Oh, gotta date the vacuum now. Maybe someday this bottle will land on the only other human in this room.

Courtney: Oh, this one I found funny just because again, trying to sound relatable and like they in any way know or care about who we are. Subject line: A no-filter take on dating plus leadership. Hey Courtney and Royce, I’ve got to say, the Ace Couple has a really thoughtful way of talking about life, love, and sex without falling into the same recycled script everybody else uses. That little line in a recent episode, unfortunately more of you are going to listen to this episode than last week’s, made me laugh and also reminded me why your show works. You both say the honest thing and trust your audience to come with you.

Royce: That was just the episode description, that wasn’t said aloud in the episode.

Courtney: No, and remind me, what— that wasn’t too long ago, but what was I think we were just doing a fluffy episode after a more serious one, and I’ve become increasingly less interested in, um, spending more than 30 seconds writing an episode description.

Royce: Yeah, it was an rSlash episode after Food Not Bombs.

Courtney: Oh yeah, but you know me, always saying the honest thing and trusting the audience to come with me. That’s why this guy wants to be on our podcast for a no-filter take on dating.

Courtney: And leadership. He’s all about self-improvement and unfiltered advice and relationships. But, you know, on top of that, he’s also a vice president of marketing at a big company. So are you not impressed at how credentialed this guy is? Plus, he’s also a certified fitness and nutrition coach.

Courtney: We should have been like, great, come on the podcast. We now have a whey protein sponsorship.

Courtney: He says, I know I’m not coming from an ace lived experience angle, but I do think I’d be a strong fit for conversations around communication, intimacy without assumptions, mindset, discipline, and real-life relationship habits.

Royce: First question, Mr. VP of Marketing and Sales: how many divorces have you had?

Courtney: Oh my gosh, that should be our first question to every relationship expert who comes on the podcast in his website says he has the number one podcast in the world for self-help and self-improvement, and I guarantee you none of you have ever heard of this podcast before. As the number one self-improvement podcast, uh, the link, uh, they provide to the YouTube channel has less than half of the subscribers we do. And they do full video, full video on YouTube, getting nowhere near the views our average podcast that is completely half-assed gets. Quit lying, we can always tell.

Royce: I just scrolled through three back-to-back emails for the, like, pitching the same people where two people were mentioned both in the headline and the subject, but only one of their names was right in both.

Courtney: Cute.

Royce: As in, a person was named in all three headlines who was not in the body, and there was a person in the body who was not named at all in the headlines. But, um, in terms of products you wouldn’t want to endorse, period, even if they were well-written emails by a human, there is this locket that you open up and you see a short AI-generated video loop of someone you care about.

Courtney: Yeah, that one. actually really bummed me out because the initial pitch was for like long-distance relationship jewelry, like with a touch sensor on it. Like if you’re in a long-distance relationship and you tap this, it’ll give the other person a little buzz or something to, to let them know you’re thinking about them.

Courtney: And I was like, that could be cute for some people. But first of all, I went to the website and these pieces of jewelry are ugly as sin. They look cheap, but they are very expensive, actually. It’s like their entire budget went to whatever technology makes it, you know, light up or vibrate or whatever it does when you touch one, and the rest of the actual jewelry, like, just literally very cheap-looking jewelry findings.

Courtney: Not stylish at all. And then yeah, the other big product are like these lockets that you upload a photo of you and your loved one, or just your loved one, and it makes an AI-generated like moving family photo. And I kinda hate it.

Royce: I assume the jewelry is not too expensive to actually manufacture. It pairs with your phone first of all, so you have to be in range of your phone. But that does mean batteries, batteries and charging.

Royce: But yeah, there have been a lot of AI family remembrance sort of things, whether it’s people trying to feed phone calls or voice recordings or writings from a family member who had passed to someone to try to continue speaking with an AI copy of them. The thing about the locket is, if this is someone who has passed, AI is always kind of a little off.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: And, and if what you’re looking at is an AI rendition in a very small format in the locket, like, that’s gonna overwrite your actual memories of what they look like.

Courtney: Yeah, well, the thing is too, the thing I don’t understand— obviously AI is such a buzzword right now and everyone’s trying to shove it down our throats at every turn, but like, digital photo frames are not new. Like, they’ve been around for a while that you can get a little frame that like through several photos. And so this is like kind of trying to be like that but in a locket, which I’m sure also already exists somewhere.

Courtney: But video is so accessible to us right now. Everyone records videos on the phones that we have on our person nearly all of the time. So why do we need AI to make our photos move? Why can’t we just upload a segment of an actual video that we took into a locket. You know what I mean? Like, why? We can just make our own videos. We have the power.

Courtney: Oh, and here’s one. So we’ve gotten things like this before, and I think back when we were on social media, I used to make sarcastic little bios based on things like podcast listicles would say about us. Like, at one point I think we were like the 2nd best ace podcast and the 4th best couple podcast. And I thought that was very, very funny.

Courtney: But most recently we’ve been informed that we are on the list of top 50 queer relationship podcasts, and they’re like, hey, here’s a link to that list. We would be very thankful if you spread the word about this by mentioning this list on your website or blog or social media. If you want, we can even send over a custom graphic for you to share to your audience saying that you are, and get this, everyone, as of now, we are the 6th best queer relationship podcast.

Royce: According to some random aggregator?

Courtney: They said it’s assembled by a panel, so you just know that there was a physical boardroom of people looking at all the queer relationship podcasts and discussing the merits of the ranking system here. What I like about this though— okay, so number six, The Ace Couple. It has our logo, it has our description, then it says, host Courtney Lane, parentheses, female. Royce Lane, parentheses, male.

Courtney: Excuse me, where to even start with that on a list of queer relationship podcasts?

Royce: And it didn’t do that on any of the other podcasts, right?

Courtney: No. Well, I guess a couple of them. The number one is like female, female, female. Number two is just female. But then the second one, two masculine names but no sex identifier. And then yeah, like three or four of them after us don’t say anything. Um, number 10 is Sounds Fake But Okay.

Courtney: I see both of those hosts’ names and they don’t get any sort of gender signifier. And then it says like everyone gets designated a listener type, and it’s interesting because our listener type is LGBTQ+ community member. I guess that’s probably correct. So the thing that is like, aside from— first of all, for the record, Royce did not take my last name.

Courtney: They just assumed. I only ever refer to Royce as my spouse. I only ever refer to Royce with they/them pronouns. We have had so many episodes talking about agender identity, gender detachment, um, not only for Royce but for a lot of people in the ace community. So very, very weird choice on their part to do that.

Courtney: This list though, by the way, and things like this are the reasons why we get so many bad PR requests, because literally this is a product for PR professionals, marketers, outreach managers who are looking to get featured on podcasts. And you can sign up, there’s a free trial, which inherently means there is a paid subscription version of this where you can unlock more information about allegedly our podcast demographics. And obtain our email contact, which is very prominently displayed on our website and YouTube description box. You really it’s not a secret.

Courtney: But when they’re saying, hey, you know, pay us money and get access to estimated listeners, podcast reviews, all these things, demographics for the Ace Couple Podcast, like whatever this list is, is either making shit up or they’re putting a lot more work into our podcast than even we are.

Royce: Hmm, another email here. Mental health entrepreneurship meets sexual wellness. The email starts, listened to your episode. With your recent episode, you brought up r/relationships, and I think there’s a lot more to unpack there.

Courtney: I think there’s a lot more to unpack there too.

Royce: Goes on to list credentials, building a platform to make sex therapy accessible. Apparently our listeners deal with asexuality, intimacy, and sex-related questions from an ace lens, and that’s exactly what they work with every day in their practice.

Courtney: Every day in their practice as a certified sex therapist every single day.

Royce: The ace lens is getting brought out.

Courtney: I like the— if you take out two of those three things in that list, your listeners deal with asexuality from an ace lens. Yeah, we sure do. You got us there. That’s, that’s what we do every single day on this podcast. Not only is this person a sex therapist, but get this, also a personal trainer.

Royce: Certified even.

Courtney: Certified.

Royce: I was just wondering, what does it take to become a certified personal trainer or a nutrition advisor?

Courtney: So credentialed. This person runs marathons, and despite the atrocious, um, grammar and sentences and just weirdness here, we got a series of follow-ups that weren’t just copy and paste. Sometimes we get more or less the same email, sent to us repeatedly that just says, following up, here’s a copy and paste of what I said the first time. This one does get shorter and shorter every time, and specifically says like, hey, I’ve been following up with you repeatedly, I’m very persistent, or I actually think this would be a great conversation, but I don’t know, I guess it’s just an occupational hazard of being a marathoner and a therapist. Is that what marathoner sex therapists do? They just pester ace podcasters? Is that the occupational hazard?

Courtney: Hold on, I haven’t even gotten to this person’s website yet. I wonder if I can find it. Usually people link us to their websites when they pitch us, but this one is not. It says the name of the companies founded, but it does not actually give us a URL, and that might be a little suspicious. Oh, it’s an AI-powered sexual wellness platform. Great. Great. Didn’t say any of that in the email.

Courtney: See, this is dystopian. They’re saying therapy made accessible. For less than the cost of a single therapy session, you can get a full year of AI therapy. No insurance, no high bills, just AI to tell you how to have sex better. We did at one point have someone reach out to us asking for us to come on to their podcast to talk about being sex workers. I think you’re lost.

Courtney: I do always find it interesting because I know they’re trying to target our listeners and maybe don’t understand our full demographic, but it is always funny to me when people reach out to us to talk about divorce, which does happen sometimes. Uh, the one I’m looking at is like, hey, you know, half of all marriages end in divorce, so let me teach you how to get divorced better than the old-fashioned way. And somehow in this email manages to praise Gwyneth Paltrow. And again, I’m sure this email got blasted out to so many different people that they did not even think twice. But if we take away the marketing aspect of this and the mass email nature of it, is it not incredibly weird?

Courtney: To contact a married couple who is not in strife or talking about divorce or has ever talked about divorce and be like, you know, half of all marriages end in divorce, so I think you could really benefit from reading my book about how to do divorce better, actually.

Royce: It’s a little weird.

Courtney: It’s a little weird! People self-promoting themselves have no shame or sense of self-awareness. Oh, and here’s a good one that again gets juicier when you actually go to this person’s website. So subject line: Reignite intimacy in monogamy.

Courtney: I couldn’t help but chuckle while listening to your latest episode on quirky allo reality shows. This kind of discussion is pivotal. Shedding light on broader conversations about relationships and sexuality, which as a board-certified sexologist, I do that. Plus, I’m also a naturopath, so I bring a holistic approach to sex and libido. And I think for that reason I should be on your show. I think I would be a complement to the dialogue you foster, in fact.

Courtney: I have tens of thousands of long-term monogamous couples who engage with me about how to enhance intimacy and love. ’Cause after all, understanding desires is a complex journey that impacts many, even within the ace community. Let’s find a way to weave this into your vibrant conversations. Your audience’s journey is something I’m passionate about. You are truly commendable and inspiring, and I believe there’s a significant overlap between the discussions you host and the discussions I have in my sexual wellness and naturopathic education, uh, business. Here’s a link to my website. And when I go to this, uh, person’s website, I get a pop-up on the home page that says, how to want sex, get more of it, and be better at it. Ma’am, let me teach you how to want sex? Read the room!

Courtney: You could also pay her for a course, about $100, called Four Days to Hot Sex. Or you could pay about $400 to get a course on the Eternal Honeymoon Extravaganza. Or the best value is if you sign up to the monthly trial for about $50, you can join the Hot and Modern Monogamy Club.

Courtney: So I will say, this person all over the place is like, I have two doctorates, and the brand and website allude to the word doctor. And again, naturopathic medicine, also acupuncture.

Courtney: But there is a hidden little disclaimer here saying, by signing up for any of our courses, you are acknowledging the information shared in this course is for educational and informational purposes only and is not.

Royce: So they had to put that disclaimer up front.

Courtney: I mean, there’s a link to it way at the bottom of the page. It’s not up front. You’re gonna see doctor, doctor, doctor, doctorates, naturopathic doctor, doctor of acupuncture, all over the place before you see the little link at the bottom that says disclaimer to click on. Sketchy. I probably shouldn’t dare to take their free assessment called Why is My Desire Low?

Courtney: A three-minute quiz. You know, I was honestly about to do it because I’m really curious. It says it will tell me if it’s hormonal, stress-driven, relational, lifestyle, or self-image. Stop guessing the primary root cause. And know, know now.

Courtney: It’ll give you a full breakdown across all these root causes and give you tailored recommendations. Not generic tips, tailored recommendations on what to do about that low desire. I was genuinely about to do it, but right up the front, it makes you put in an email and says all of your quiz answers will be sent to your email. So again, marketing tactic.

Courtney: And I think that is going to be all for today. Maybe in the future at some point we will do a part three because we have no shortage of these still in our inbox and more coming on at least a weekly basis. But for today, we are going to leave you all off with today’s featured Marketplace vendor, Timelost Atelier.

Courtney: Where you can find witchy and alternative leather goods and jewelry made by an asexual artist on the edge of Salem, Massachusetts. Now unfortunately, leather is not for me, so this is not a shop for me, but I can appreciate the beautiful artwork. I am, for example, looking at a beautifully painted death’s head hawk moth. I love a good hawk moth, and the purple color on the background is gorgeous. This is a bifold wallet, so if anyone is looking for a really quality wallet, that seems to be a majority of the shop right now. You can find wallets that look like spellbooks. We have one called the Necromancer, the Alchemist, the Occultist, the Oracle.

Courtney: And it looks like the shop also does custom orders. There is a glowing review here by a customer who commissioned a Final Fantasy-inspired wallet. Links, as always, to find our featured Marketplace vendor are in the show notes on our website as well as the description box if you are listening on YouTube.

Courtney: And as always, thank you all so much for being here, and we will talk to you all next time.