When there's a cacophony of random people trying to get your attention, it's overwhelming.
The parasites–the people who have crafted a message to muscle past the others–are what tend to get through.
That makes us increasingly distrustful of all inbound.
Support call centers deliberately make the process excruciating to deter all but the most motivated customers.
I understand that in the UK upper class, it's typical in ad hoc interactions with new people to not share your name proactively.
Presumably the upper class were constantly inundated by inbound interest, and they had to develop etiquette that helped apply selection process.
I wonder if AI will change social norms for inbound.
I'm so used to getting AI slop cold outreach, that I erroneously bucketed actual cold outreach from a CEO of a successful company into spam.
Whoops!