When I woke up this morning, I had an email from an address I didn't recognize. This is nothing peculiar; any joker who is reading this right now can just look to the right and see how to send me an electronic message. What was strange was that the guy acted like he knew me. He's playing a show in Philly soon, and the (very short) email included the lines "You should come. We'll talk old times."
We'll talk old times, eh? So I started thinking: did I know this guy? I mean, the name he used was obviously a pseudonym. He could maybe be someone I knew in high school or who was on the periphery of my friends in college. Maybe hard times had led him to writing terse, cryptic emails instead of mmm…explaining our relationship. But then I went to his website, and I looked at his picture. And I'll tell you, I'm pretty sure that I've never seen this man before.
No big deal, right? Well, except for the fact that he's finding people who live in cities he's touring to and apparently sending them emails pretending he knows them in an effort to get people to his shows. Seriously? That's how he expects to get fans? By telling not-quite-truths? (I didn't say lies, because he could easily claim that by "talk old times" he meant discussing the plights of feudal societies in England.)
Dude, listen here: it's not great to send people random emails inviting them to your show just because they live where you're touring to. It's downright silly to pretend you already know them.