Wednesday, July 08, 2009

The Unfriendly yaari.com


A couple of months ago I got this mail (Type 1) in my inbox.

XYZ wants you to join Yaari!
Is XYZ your friend?
Yes, XYZ is my friend! No, XYZ isn't my friend.
Please respond or XYZ may think you said no :(
Thanks,
The Yaari Team
* For my non-hindi friends, 'yaari' means 'friendship'.

Unfamiliar to the ways of social networking sites and wanting to make the sad look turn into a smile (for I really thought it was a personalized message from XYZ), I ended up clicking (just one click) on Yes, XYZ is my friend! Little did I know that I had clicked on a 'public embarrassment' and a 'constant source of irritation'.

The result of the click was a window of yaari.com which wanted me to enlist by giving my mail id etc. that’s where I committed the greatest folly of my life. I enlisted.

A day later, I started getting mails (Type 2) like this.

dear meraj
I am a friend but do not feel comfortable getting into multiple groups like yaari and hence have not responded.
warm regards
PQR

What the overfriendly people of 'The Yaari Team' had done was something extremely rude. Without my permission, it generated a Type 1 mail and sent to almost everyone on my Gmail mailing list. Now, a) I’m not the social networking types and b) Even if I was, I would not be sending such a lame and soppy message to everybody on my mailing list.

The Type 2 mail hasn’t stopped since then (some have also accepted my fake invitation in the meantime). It’s like a monster that has been created because I got myself into the unfriendly ways of yaari.com.

Internet, with all its amazing positives has its share of flaws which can be extremely disgusting. I would request all my readers to be cautious about such unfriendly sites. I am.

17 comments:

Gunat said...

The name "Yaari" alone gave me enough warning to stay the eff away...FB is time-consuming enough!!!

Aroon said...

hahah this shit happens a lot man.. it totally sucks

Bhaskar Khaund said...

Yaar , am also one of the victims of this Yaarana...give these sites an inch and they snatch a Yaard..cest la vie...:-) - Yaar Bhaskar

Smiling Dolphin said...

ah, the yaari spider will find this post no doubt and you will begin to get personalised mails from the promoters of the website:-)

Spiff said...

I didn't feel bad and Im sure you didn't when I dint respond to it :) ....Mostly because have been trained to avoid such stuff at work.

But its an interesting business model, send some melodramatic mesg and make people respond and spam everyone on their address book and then you can go and tell a VC that you have a million users registered. Sell the site off and have some yaarana in Hawai :)

Surath Chatterji said...

yaari hai imaan mera yaar meri zindagi...!

Rahul Jauhari said...

I put my mail account on high security and mark such things spam.
These Yaari types can make anyone's social life miserable,

meraj said...

Gunat,
you are right about the name...shoudve stayed away.

Aroon,
it totally, completely, absolutely sucks

Bhaskar,
sad to know that you also got tricked by this crudeness

Smiling One,
no personalized mails yet

Spiff,
am glad you didnt respond. and its an interesting business model indeed.

Brownstone,
LOL

Mr Jauhari,
me has taken same measures now...der aaye durust aaye!

phish said...

i dunno.. is this why the aversion to fb in general as well. ur activity there is seriously limited as well.

Namas said...

dts what!i kept on wondering as to how come u r sending that mail again n again...but then i knew tht u must also be trapped into it like many others..

meraj said...

phish,
yeah...i dont want the world to know what i am doing hence i'm not active on facebook. on the other hand, i dont mind looking at what others are doing without being intrusive. so, fb has both sides to it :)

Namas,
yeah, its a bloody trap.

Pooja Nair said...

Meraj you are too innocent for the online world!

You need someone younger and wiser telling you what to do...:)

(notice the slight alteration from the lyrics of the "i'm 16 going on 17" song from Sound of Music..:) )

meraj said...

Pooja,
thankfully, you are there and I depend on you :)

Diwakar Sinha said...

Even I clicked but didnt go furthur and register. guess this happens a lot

meraj said...

thanks for dropping by, Diwakar.

ALIen said...

baba you need a break.... have KI-KAT

vishalc2005@gmail.com said...

even i got your 'yaari mail responded thinking it'd be something interesting but was surprised