Published: March 21, 2008 10:10 pm            

Today’s spam is not nearly as filling

I get more than 250 e-mails every day. Of which, about 20 to 25 actually require my attention. The remaining 200-plus fall into the despicable category of spam.

You see, I have had the same e-mail address for more than 10 years now. That is 10 years of my e-mail being available for the whole world to see and, evidently, for the whole world to offer me opportunities for male enhancement or the chance to earn thousands of dollars by helping foreign businessmen move funds out of their war-torn countries.

I have tried spam killers, spam blockers, and Outlook rules to control this massive onslaught of intrusive opportunities to get cheap meds online. Each program I select has its advantages of blocking quite a bit of the traffic. However, much of it continues to get in and the trade off of using a spam blocker is the inevitable risk of blocking an e-mail that is actually important.

I don’t know how many clients I have had who didn’t respond to me because my messages were sent to their spam blocking software. (At least that is the excuse they give me and for my fragile psyche it is better to believe that then face the realization that they didn’t want to hear from me.)

When using a filter you have to spend months training the software about the difference between Flagstar Bank needing to update my account information (I have never once held an account there, but if I ever do open one, I will make sure I use that link to update my info) and actually wanting to know that I can have a free appetizer at Red Lobster because it’s my birthday.

Whoever decided to call this annoying daily intrusion into my otherwise pleasant life “spam” has done a great injustice to the mystery meat that is the original SPAM. Growing up, we used SPAM as a breakfast meat, we put SPAM on sandwiches, we even mixed SPAM in casseroles but we never, ever used SPAM to talk to lonely girls. Calling annoying e-mails spam is an insult to inexpensive processed food everywhere.

Being in business, I understand the value of affordable advertising and the wonderful fact that the Internet is free makes e-mail a fantastic opportunity to advertise for cheap. As a matter of fact, as a consumer I even appreciate that when I give one my e-mail address I am volunteering to receive pertinent and targeted marketing. To me, this is even a good thing. I am just cheap enough to value e-mail coupons just because I took time to fill out a form.

What I don’t understand is how there are enough people out in cyber space clicking on $999 free bonus sign-ups to make it worthwhile for thousands of people worldwide to spend hours skimming e-mail addresses off the web, just so they can spend more time developing ways to work around firewalls and spam filters. Are there really people who think that reputable pharmacies are going to advertise using four line e-mails sent at random? Or do you want to buy ED medication from a company that can’t even spell?

I have two theories on the origin of all spam.

First, I think that companies such as Norton and McAfee employ entire legions of socially inept people with a grudge against society to continually develop new forms of spam and viruses so they can repeatedly sell us protection from these threats over and over.

Second, spam is the real weapon of mass destruction developed by Saddam, Osama, and the other terrorists to bring all forms of productivity to a screeching halt until some day Western Civilization throws up their hands and says “we surrender.”

Or, I just suppose it is an evil and twisted plan to keep me from becoming so productive that I can take over the world!

In the meantime, if I fail to reply promptly to your e-mail, please be patient as I am probably just checking out the best new poker site on the web!

— Kirby Kirkpatrick is a freelance writer and co-owner of Success Express in Plainfield. Contact him by e-mailing to kirby@successexpressmp.com

        

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