A Brief and Admittedly Petulant Note to IFC Films and [redacted]

[Update: This caught me in a bad mood, and it was showing up as a top search result for the person who sent it, so at their request I have removed their name because, really, it’s not that big a deal.]

I just got an email that has begins with the following text in large centered print (only the last few lines matter for this post):

IFC Films

and The Fortune Academy

Invite you to Join Former Inmates at a Special Halfway House Screening of

The Standford Prison Experiment

Post-Film Q&A will focus on the current state of the American Prison System and the psychological dynamic of power
with Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Billy Crudup, Michael Angarano and director Kyle Patrick Alvarez

When:
Tuesday, July 14th @6PM

Where:
The Fortune Academy
630 Riverside Drive (at 140th Street)

Note what’s missing from the location: The city and state. I get something like this in my email every few months — a marketing communication about some event for which the marketer just assumes I know what city they’re in. It would be one thing if this was from some sort of city-specific mailing list, but quite often it’s just some generic marketing outlet. This time it was from [redacted employee] at [redacted promoter].

Still, even before Googling it, I’m pretty sure the location is probably in New York City, with Washington D.C. a good second guess, since only people from those two cities are the kinds of arrogant fucktards who assume theirs is the only city that matters.

Google tells me that the Fortune Academy is indeed in New York, NY. (The closest the email comes to telling me this is a block of text on the history of the Fortune Academy that mentions it’s in West Harlem.) If you live around there, this might be an interesting event for you to attend, although general pissedness makes me want to point out that some people are skeptical about the lessons of the Standford Prison Experiment.

This isn’t rocket science: If you’re going to send out event announcements to people who live 800 miles away, at least have the courtesy to tell them what city the event is in.