Pssst . . . anyone interested in the email list of Modern Language Association??

This one came in the email:

On Dec 5, 2022, at 12:01 PM, ** <**@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I just wanted to know if you’re interested in acquiring the email-list of Modern Language Association of America 2023

Please let me know your thoughts on this so that I can share with you the number of attendees and the cost.

Awaiting your reply.

Regards,
**
Marketing Manager

The bolding and highlighting was in the original.

I’m really tempted to reply to find out the number of attendees and the cost, but not so tempted that I want to get into an email conversation with a spammer. And, as David Owen memorably pointed out so many years ago in his report on the meeting of meeting planners, the people who go to the meetings are the attenders; it is the conference itself that is the attendee.

In any case, I just love the idea that someone’s out there hawking the MLA membership list. What’re they planning to sell to these people? Autographed copies of the complete works of Chaucer?

11 thoughts on “Pssst . . . anyone interested in the email list of Modern Language Association??

  1. Whoever sent this to you bought a list with *your* name on it. They thought that was valuable… so they clearly have a bias to thinking any academic-related email list is valuable.

  2. The other day I got an invitation to chair a session at a conference, “in recognition of your outstanding work in field X”, totally unrelated to my field Y. It looked like one of those scam conferences, but I usually err on the side of being polite, so I told them there must be a mixup, I work in Y, not X, which is incidentally very, very, very far from Y.

    The same day they wrote back, essentially telling me that they are happy to create a session on Y and I can chair it.

    I am still struggling to figure out where they payoff is here. Conference participation is not something anyone cares about, even if it is a legit conference. It must more than a thousand euros (travel + hotel + fees) and a couple of days. So… who takes them on these things? Who finances that? Are there universities or similar where they at least pay lip service to participating in research _and_ have free money floating around for these things?

    • In the system used by my (wealthy European) country for assessing the output of academics at public universities, one can obtain “points” for presenting at conferences. These points are fairly trivial relative to what’s on offer for publishing in even low-impact journals, but so long as one stays within the system they are cumulative across one’s career and have an influence on one’s salary (e.g., if I get 1 point for presenting at random conference X this year, my salary in all subsequent years will be a tiny bit higher). Thus, there could be a lifetime payoff for attending such a conference, even if one has to pay out-of-pocket for travel and accommodation. (I say “could be” as I haven’t actually calculated the relative costs and benefits.)

  3. How many members of the MLA would have decisions on book purchase at high school and tertiary education levels? I think something like English as a Second/Foreign Language sales are going to be a significant niche market.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *