Posted 7/05/2002 01:53:00 AM by Douglas

Junk mail, Spam, telemarketers, I put the all in the same boat. They're all trying to make a buck, and who can't forgive them for that? I knew many people that worked for people that called unsuspecting folks when they least expected it, and I myself was responsible for mailing out sales fliers to every librarian in New Jersey. {how that happened from Austin, Tx, is quite another story}

But what I don't get is the spam. It costs so much less than a phone call or a direct mail campaign that they can blanket the inboxes of unsuspecting hotmail and yahoo users faster than you can say "change my password."

The point of any of this annoying bullshit is this: If no one ever responded to it, it would go away. But for every 15 people a telemarketer pisses off, 1 person buys. So it's cost effective, and another 15 people get pissed off.

With spam, the numbers are obviously much greater, because the cost of spam is so much cheaper. I would venture a guess to say that one in 1,000 people respond to "work at home for $5,000 a day" or "get a dick that touches the ground" or "get a credit card fast" or "refinance now!!!" or "liquid viagria" or the myriad of others I get on a daily basis.

But who in the hell is responding to this crap??? Who checks his email for the 3rd time on a Friday and suddenly realizes, after deleting 14,000 messages about "increasing his penis size" that now is the time to act, and he needs to respond to the 14,001 message that falls into his inbox like a turd in a punchbowl.

What can we do? None of this click here to be removed bullshit. Even if I was looking for liquid viagra or to refinance my mortgage, I would never go with a company (in either case) that randomly emailed indiscriminate names in a list.

Again, maybe it's just me. . . . . .