Spam This!

Oh, how I hate spyware...but also this

Newsflash. I hate spyware. OK. Maybe that isn’t news. But here IS some news: I hate spam.

Yes, spammers (you know who you are) I am talking to you. I hate you. Don’t cross my path. Because I will hurt you.

We are all familiar with spammers: in the minds of many, they are the new public enemy number one. These are the poor, wretched souls who spend their days (and possibly their obviously-dateless nights) hunched over their computer keyboards, most of them expecting that you will indeed buy their herbal viagra if only they can saturate your e-mail account with eight fucking e-mails a day.

Or, surely you will buy some of their shitty child-labor-made Chinese socks if only they can invade your website message board or weblog and post what is essentially an unsolicited advertisement.

And, of course, these people will all be sure that they do these things in ways that ensure you cannot contact them directly in order to tell them: A.)I’m not interested, B.)stop bothering me, or perhaps even my personal favourite, C.)fuck off.

And, just as with those who create the spyware and adware programs that have polluted cyberspace to the point where it is navigable only to those blessed with the computer skills necessary to stay a step ahead of them, I do not (wink, wink) advocate someone taking a baseball bat with a huge nail stuck through it to the craniums of e-mail spammers (nudge, nudge) it seems that someone should do something about this annoying phenomena before it grows completely beyond our control.

AND, it seems, we can. It starts with little things like not buying the products they are peddling (if you are buying these things, seriously, stop, or I will be forced to hurt you as well), and continues with things like reporting them and the companies they work for to your e-mail account holder’s spam filter.

And while none of these things may substitute for a good old-fashioned ass kicking (which once again – nudge nudge – I am not advocating), they are a start. But perhaps it is time (as with adware and spyware) that e-mail spam was regulated.
While I am far from being in favor of a massive wave of iron-fisted censorship coursing through the internet, it seems that there ought to be some sort of e-harassment law in place to prevent these douchebags from drowning us in e-mails offering to sell us programs to crack our friends and family’s passwords (how the fuck is this not criminal as it is?). While this certainly won’t eliminate this annoying epidemic (for instance, spam coming from overseas couldn’t be regulated by any one country), it can certainly help to cut back on it.

Perhaps it is time that we all e-mailed our members of Parliament (or, for those of you south of the border, Congress) nine or ten times a day until they crack and either pass a law against e-mail spamming, or at least buy our damn herbal viagra.
Especially that Strom Thurmond fella.