Spam...

No, I'm not talking about the canned meat product shown to the left, that was so popular in the 50s. I'm talking about Email Spam. You know, the messages that fill your Inbox, with offers of amazing deals on painkillers & meeting singles in your area & on & on & on.

And yes, I know most email programs have Spam filters that try their best to catch all the thousands of junk mail messages that invade our Inbox on a daily basis.

What I don't get is this: Why do those people in marketing think assaulting people with info about your product is going to make them want to buy it? I would think the opposite would be true. I know they say even negative advertising is still advertising, but please!

Here's a perfect example: I went to check my email this morning, and it said I had 65 new messages! On a typical day, I maybe get 4 or 5. So, I'm looking at all these messages, and every one of them says the same thing, and is from the same domain. By the way, I'm not going to post the link or even mention the company, because that's what they want--any kind of exposure, even on some stranger's blog.

So I mark them all as "junk", which in theory is supposed to tell the internet provider to treat them as spam in the future. Then I go to get my new messages, and it tells me, as it's trying to pull up yet another of the same message, that my Inbox does not have enough room to continue downloading the rest of my new messages.

As I'm grumbling to myself, and thinking some choice thoughts about this sender, I go check the Mail Server to see how large these messages are. 2MB each!!!! No wonder my Inbox crashed.

And again, why would anyone think that after message #64, or even 24, I would finally say, "Wow. They're persistent. I guess I'll check out what they're trying to sell me."

But the thing that really gets me about Spam is this: Multiple copies of the same email aside, what they're really doing is trying to validate your email address. When it says, "Click Here to Unsubscribe Me", and it's something you've never signed up for, when you reply back, you've just confirmed your address as being valid. Now they can sell it to others. In essence, the product they're advertising is merely a vehicle to the main goal: confirmation of a valid email address.

Oy! We just can't win! Oh well, at least the sun is out today! So get away from your email, and your spam, and go enjoy this beautiful weather.

Blessings friends! K~