The last thing I want when visiting a website is to be told I’m a loser because I don’t want to subscribe to their newsletter.

It’s hardly good marketing yet that’s what’s happened twice in the past week.

Visiting Tourism Queensland’s new blog – which is pretty good by the way – I was accosted by a newsletter popup offering two options:

Subscribe to this list or No, I loathe fun.

Well, I guess I loathe fun because I chose not subscribe.

It was the only way I could get rid of the popup and continue reading the blog.

No doubt it’s supposed to be humourous but for mine it comes across as rude, a passive aggressive two finger farewell.

There’s simply no point.

A simple No Thanks would suffice.

Australian Business Traveller is another site that takes the “go to hell” approach.

Its opt-out option for its signup popup is:

No, thanks. I don’t like travelling better.

Really? Screw you too.

Then there’s US site Skift, which farewells non-subscribers with:

“I don’t want to stay informed of the latest travel trends”.

Ooooh, let’s hit them with some guilt – and arrogance – that always works.

Maybe it does – but will you get the right kind of subscribers, people that open the stuff you send?

How about these websites inject some real humour, rooted in reality, into their opt-out messages.

Something like:

“No the last thing I need in my life is another newsletter that I’ll never read and will only end up clogging my inbox.”

That’s something I’d find pretty funny.

It’s also the truth.