Promoters: the species of social leeches endlessly harassing us for our free time. I love writing about these New York party organizers because I find their tactics (mass text messaging, Evites, mass emails, personalized emails, facebook harassment, casual texts, guilt-trip texts, phone solicitation) endlessly fascinating. I thought I’d seen it all. I thought no promoter text message could have the power to shock me.

I was wrong.

I wrote a past article about fromoters (deluded friends who harbor the illusion they’re a hot city promoter, doing this dirty job voluntarily, sans pay). I’d like to introduce another category: The no-moter. This is the promoter you’ve said no to a thousand times. The promoter you perhaps never even went out with in the first place. Who you perhaps don’t even know! How they even have your number remains an enigma. Yet they text you daily anyway.

I’m doing a [insert famous sports team] celebrity event tonight with [insert semi-celebrity name] and [insert a rapper’s name] performing at [Marquee / Tenjune] with [insert DJ you’ve never heard of] from San Tropez. Say my name@door, tons of bottlezz. Are you coming?

You’d think after sending a target messages like this for 367 days with no response EVER, the promoter might remove the prey from their phone’s intricate mailing system and save everyone the AT&T charge of ten cents. But no. Promoter lists are kind of like a tramp stamp. They’re with you for life. And don’t bother texting the no-moter about getting yourself removed from his mailing, because not even he knows how to remove you. His phone’s hooked up to computers which are hooked up to interns which are hooked up to facebook which relay some technical code which births crazy digital mailing lists that only an IT guy from India could understand. Finding a needle in a haystack while drunk and blindfolded would take less time than locating your name in this jumbled promotional spamming method.

I’d like to preface the following incident by reiterating that no-motors are not bad people.

They’re just people you don’t know. I, like many, happen to have very close friends who promote. My loyalties are therefore tied. The ‘no’ answer (or rather non-response) isn’t because I think I’m too good to go out with you, I just have a prior allegiance to people I actually know.

In an iPhone mishap in which I meant to call a friend of mine we’ll call Tim, I accidently called no-motor Tim. It took a solid five minutes of me positing ‘why does your voice sound so different?’ and ‘why do you keep harping about Pink Elephant?’ until I realized I wasn’t talking to my friend Tim, but Tim the promoter I never go out with. I explained to no-motor Tim in the nicest was possible that I’d actually contacted him by mistake, yet he still interpreted my phone call as me finally coming around and craving to go out with him that night.

I’ve only met no-motor Tim a handful of times, but he seems to take the constant rejection of promoter existence more personally than his younger, hotter promoter counterparts. While I’d definitely be open to going out with him, partying doesn’t pay me. My two jobs pay me. So I need to be energized and lucid which translates to only go out occasionally. And when you’re going out occasionally, chances are you’re going to want to spend it with your friends.

Despite my best efforts at clarification, no-motor Tim insisted that I was making an appearance at his party that night, which of course I didn’t because I had plans with my friend Tim, the person I’d actually meant to call. No-motor Tim consequently got angry.

The promotional text I got the next day:

MB, I heard from a girl that you gained weight. I’m deleting you from my phone list. I’m sorry. Clubs want me with skinny girls only.

Woah! Low blow!

Will he actually delete me from whatever jumbled promotional spamming method he uses?

At this point, I could only be so lucky.

Tags: clubs, Daytime drama, miscommunications, New York, partying, promoters

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Daytime drama, NYC, clubs, parties. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.