Junk Mail

Everyone hates junk mail, and by junk mail, I mean email spam. But what exactly is it that irritates me so much? Is it the predictable subject matter? The occasionally offensive content? The ridiculous schemes targetted at the (apparently) extremely gullible? Is it the clumsiness with which this bizzare style of "advertising" is delivered?

No. What I hate most about spam is the grammar. Once upon a time, spam actually was a more or less legitimate way of advertising a product. You know, back when they actually SAID what the product was in the subject line. These days...dear god. Spam subject lines are apparently created by some sort of random nonsense generator. Right now, for example, my Yahoo email account has some 1400 pieces of spam in it (I've had the account for about as long as Yahoo has existed, and spam typically reaches it at the rate of about 1 or 2 pieces per hour). And one of the subject lines from said spam is "A robot in cancel." What the heck does that mean? What could it possibly mean? Why on earth would I want to read it? Clearly, whoever wrote it doesn't actually speak english, and I'm pretty sure I won't be able to communicate in whatever form of nonsense-speak it's utilizing. It's like getting emails from some sort of malevolent, malfunctioning artificial intelligence out of a William Gibson novel.

Spam is downright creepy. I mean, generally speaking, I do believe that humans are basically good. But if anyone ever wanted to make an argument for the evil that lurks in the hearts of men, I'm confident that spam email would definitely form the crux of that argument.

And I love the twisted logic that concluded it would be a GREAT idea to misspell words in the subject line. Because, you know, it makes perfect sense to misspell the word "penis," since that way they'll be able to circumvent the email filter I created that trashes all emails with "penis" in the subject line...except, of course, I created that filter because I wasn't interested in said emails in the first place. Not only is the AI behind spam malevolent and malfunctioning, it seems incapable of processing the fact that NO means NO.

I honestly think that spam emails should be punishable with the death penalty. That's a strong statement, since I don't really believe in the death penalty to begin with. But I can't think of anything anywhere on earth as frustrating, as irritating, as wasteful, as just plain pointless as email spam.

Well, at least this is giving me inspiration for a new kind of personnality test to create on OKCupid: The "What Kind of Spam Email are You?" Test... Are you the "increase your p*n1s size" email, or the "Get a FREE replica Rolex watch!" email? Yeah...this is one test that'll practically write itself. Or better yet, I could get a malevolent AI to write it for me...