I’m thinking someone must have something up his filthy little sleeve, because suddenly spam is getting through my gmail filter like crazy. I’ve read of a couple of other people getting slammed with more than usual, so it’s not just me. I really, really wish there were some sort of enforceable international law that these morons could get slammed with. There should also be some sort of penalty for people who respond to spam – if one out of a hundred thousand people spammed buys something, it’s made it worth something for the spammer. Maybe some jail time. Unless you bought a male enhancement product, then publishing your face in some sort of national media would be just punishment.
Imagine a world without spam. . .without telemarketers. . .without billboards. . .without audio and/or video advertisement in stores and shopping centers. . .paradise. Magazines and newspapers keep going because of ad revenue, and the ones that don’t interest you are easy to skip – besides, most of the time the advertisers are targeted to the readers, so you might actually see something of interest. Radio ads are annoying, but now that it’s so easy to have CD players or hook up iPods or MP3 players into the car, you can avoid those. TV ads are heinous. They take as much as a third of a show’s viewing time, they’re not clever, entertaining, or informative, but again there are ways to avoid them (we have an old Replay unit that allows us to select commercial skipping in advance. Love it.) The rest of these ads are random – let’s throw out tons and tons of them and hope someone in the target audience sees one. The heck with anyone who isn’t going to buy it. They’re intrusive. In many cases, they add injury to insult by coming in a form that the receiver has to pay for. Spam, unwanted faxes, sales calls or messages on our cell phones, all of these involve us PAYING to receive advertising we don’t want. If even a few spammers were caught and forced to pay a fine for each email sent, it would go a long way towards ending this crap. It’s all about the money, so hit them in the pocketbook.
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