Title: I love you, let me spam you to show you how much
Today's topic: spam and chain letters. Discuss.
This should probably be in the rant section, but I'm going to put it here just in case anyone misses it. Pay attention; this means YOU. Dammit.
I got another chain mail letter today. This was one of those typically mushy "carpe diem" letters... you know the ones. "Live every day as though it was your last!" That sort of thing. Fine, fine. What got me riled up was this blurb at the bottom:
> > > If you received this it is because someone cares for you. If > > > you're too busy to take the few minutes that it takes right now to > > > forward this, would it be the first time you didn't do the little > > > thing that would make a difference in your relationships? I can > > > tell you it certainly won't be the last. Take a few minutes to > > > send this to a few people you care about, just to let them know > > > that you're thinking of them.
I'm pretty sure I can tell my loved ones I care about them without filling up their mailboxes, wasting precious bandwidth, increasing the level of junk mail on the Net and pissing off other people who hate spam and chain letters as much as I do. And WHAT is with the guilt trip? God! It's bad enough having to wade through regular junk mail trying to sell me real estate and cable boxes without this noise. If I wanted to drown in guilt, I'd go to church or visit my mother. Just because I don't go against everything I believe in as a sysadmin doesn't mean I don't love my friends and family. Jesus.
The worst ones I've seen have been the religious ones. I have nothing against religion; I've had some pretty good conversations with God, myself. But WHY, I ask you, is it necessary to accuse me of not having convictions because I didn't spam everyone I know with this touchy-feely chain letter? "If you TRULY love Jesus, you'll send this prayer along to all your friends!!" Excuse me, but I don't think Jesus would mind me hitting "delete" and doing my part to reduce useless junk on the Net. What would Jesus do? Jesus would fight spam, that's what.
Spam sucks. Chain letters suck. There is no exception to this rule. There is never a time when chain letters do not suck. Forwarded e-mail is evil, especially since most people don't know how to strip headers and I end up having to wade through a dozen sections of "This is cool!" before the actual content, such as it were. It makes me seriously consider implementing filters to immediately delete anything from AOL, Hotmail, USA.Net and Yahoo! mail, except that I have friends who occasionally send me real mail from those domains.
To anyone who may consider thinking about sending me e-mail at some point, now or in the future, read this. Burn it into your memory. Tattoo it on your forehead if you have to. I'm talking to you. Yes, you over there scoffing at this diatribe. Yes, you. YOU. Pay ATTENTION.
I do not want chain letters. I do not want forwarded mail. I have already seen that funny post you're forwarding to me; I probably have it archived somewhere from my NINE YEARS of receiving stuff like this from people like you. Henceforth, if you send me something with "Fwd:" in the header, it will be deleted unread. Send me a real letter or nothing at all. I get enough unwanted e-mail from people trying to sell me things. Especially do not send me news flashes, pleas from someone's great-aunt's cousin looking for a missing kid, or petitions. It's not that I don't care; I just don't want to hear it over e-mail. It's a waste of bandwidth, disk space and my limited time. I also don't want to get touchy-feely-huggy shit, quizzes, questionnaires, or anything that contains a request to "pass this on to all your friends!!!" If you send me this shit, there's a good chance you will get added to my spam filter, and you'll be wondering why I never write you back.
Now. Go and be enlightened. And don't say I didn't warn you.
-- marcie.