I suppose I should appreciate inexplicably being entered in your subscriber database since the May 2010 issue.

I suppose I should appreciate being sent glossy pages full of pictures of beautiful new cars. I do enjoy slick cars, after all (although to be honest, I’d take a classic car any day over something new). (Still, I much prefer to see the physical versions over mere pictures.)

But that doesn’t change the fact that I am perhaps the least likely person to ever succumb to the temptations posed most directly by the cars in your pages, or the accessories of all sorts advertised amongst them. I am a complete losing proposition for you: I don’t pay for your magazine, and I won’t pay your advertisers for it, either.

Maybe you think, because I’m in the 18-24 male demographic, the products in your pages will entice me. I think you will find few people so anomalous as me in that population. I don’t own a car (I bike), I rarely need a car (and on those occasions, borrowing or renting is significantly cheaper), and I don’t plan to own a car in the foreseeable future. And, for as long as I live in the Bay Area, that’s very unlikely to change.

I do appreciate your willingness to send me something for nothing. My office appreciates this, too. (Or at least it appreciates it no less than I do.)

But a friendly suggestion: if you really want to give someone a free subscription to your magazine, give it to someone who might actually read it.

(And in the unlikely event that someone decided to give me a subscription [presumably despite knowing just how little I care about cars] and I somehow missed the new-gift-subscription notice, I’m really sorry, but this magazine just isn’t for me: it’s complete deadweight loss. How about in the future we go do something fun together, mutually agreed upon, instead?)