“You could win instantly! Look under cap for code!” So you twist off the cap and because you’re curious, you go to the website, where they want you to set up an account with your name, address, phone number, e-mail, secret identity, and beverage preferences before you even get to enter the code. You very much wonder whether you should, worrying that rather than winning instantly, you’ll be sacrificing several minutes of your life in order to lose. But then you tell yourself that 99 out of 100 cap recipients are too lazy or too freaked out about spam to spend time filling out the online form, and you begin to think your chances of winning are… enticing.
And so you make up your mind that you’ll fill out the form, with complete honesty, giving a real e-mail address and phone number, and you even spend some time thinking about your beverage consumption habits over the last month so that you can provide meaningful answers to their survey. And then, finally, the glorious moment arrives where you input the code and get to press “submit”… And what happens? You win! Instantly! Of course you do! And what is it that you have won? Why, you have won the sudden realization that you will not be receiving a Mini Cooper Convertible, nor a DVD player, nor a free bottle of soda, nor an erotic massage from the CEO of Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc. And it’s not that the code is not a winning one, it’s that the code isn’t even recognized because you’re in the wrong contest, and nowhere on the website does it point you to the right contest.
But please, don’t call me a loser or a sucker. Call me a bodhisattva instead.