I Think Someone’s A Bit Confused

Today I received in the mail, along with the typical credit card and magazine subscription offers, my AARP membership application.

Wait, what?

My parental units just became eligible!

How do I get on these mailing lists?? Do I fit some old-person profile or something?

This reminds me of the time in high school when both the VFW and the American Legion thought that I was a veteran.


Comments

10 responses to “I Think Someone’s A Bit Confused”

  1. I guess you’re just old before your time, or something like that.

  2. Try to join, see what happens! The AARP membership discounts at hotels, museums, etc, are quite nice, especially when you get to take advantage of them starting in your early 20s!

  3. Reminds me of the two times that Penn thought I was a Hispanic alum.

  4. AARP is now officially a contentless acronym (like SAT or CERN) rather than the “American Association of Retired People”, because they now claim that rather than being an organization *of* retired people it’s an organization that supports causes vaguely in their interest. Have you done anything to make people think you’re largely in favor of maintaining Social Security and expanding Medicare?

  5. I voted.

    Maybe they’re watching me?

  6. I concur. I assume the application includes supply DOB. Be fun to see how long it takes them to catch on.

  7. Somewhere in the ether, there are mailing lists with birthdates attached. I searched one on the internet a while back and discovered that it thought was born in 1926. All of a sudden, we understand why AARP and scooter stores kept sending him mail. We don’t know how that happened, though.

    Maybe the same is true for you.

  8. a) AARP (and presumably Scooter Stores) have lots of money with which to buy mailing lists
    b) mailing list costs are probably based on number of names on the list
    c) AARP et alia probably assume that as long as the names and addresses are mostly right, the lists are good enough
    ==> d) the mailing list providers make more money if they’re sloppy about recording people’s ages

    Just a theory. Sure, that means on some level they’re being fraudulent, but does anyone really care?

  9. I second the proposal to join. I’d love to see you demand an AARP discount.

  10. Out of boredom, I played crazy demographic games with warranty response cards, magazine subscription reply things, and the like throughout my high school years. The only rule was that all interaction had to happen via postal mail, and that none of my responses could be prosaic or unprompted by form. My crowning accomplishment was an unsolicited complimentary membership in AARP, addressed to a wealthy “Reverend Bezoar.”

    It took fucking ages to get off all of those discount prom gown mailing lists, though.

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