Everyone I know who uses AOL, and a fair number of people who don’t, have fallen prey to a fairly standard tech scam ? mass porn e-mails. Well, these e-mails are not only an insult to my intelligence, but most have been thought up by profoundly backward-thinking people.
Like many other people, I don’t like junk mail, but some people might decide to use a product based on a mailing they receive with coupons or something.
In addition, if you send me real mail ? not “fake” stuff, like e-mail ? it requires investment. You are using up the world’s resources, and spending your own money, on me. It makes me feel special. It would be sort of rewarding, in an environmentally unsound way, if I could somehow record the number of trees slaughtered for my benefit.
E-mail on the other hand, costs nothing. If I understand how the internet works ? which, to be honest, I don’t ? the magic Internet elves who deliver e-mail are not only a renewable resource, but don’t charge any money whatsoever for this service. This means that mass e-mails, also known as spam, require no effort on the part of the sender.
I have a formula that explains the difference. The number of dead trees, multiplied by the amount of money required to deliver the message, is directly proportional ? and you thought math wasn’t applicable to your everyday life ? to how much you care about me. Junk mail cares more about me than, say, my mother does, whereas mass e-mail doesn’t even send a card on my birthday.
The worst part, though, is that these e-mails insult my intelligence.
First off, I know the e-mail addresses that I should be getting mail from. So, writing something like “Hey I forgot to ask you about?” or “Re: our last conversation” in the subject line is like someone telling me “Hey, gullible isn’t in the dictionary.”
Sometimes, though, if the subject line is vague enough, and the address has a name in it you might know, you read it, just in case.
First off, this is my time the mass e-mailers are wasting. I want it back. I could have easily made a batch of Easy Mac in the time I’ve spent reading these e-mails.
When I do read them, though, I know that it was not written a) by a female, let alone the female who is claiming to have written it, or b) as a special message to me ? especially when the To: field of the e-mail has 90 other email addresses, in alphabetical order.
Here’s the problem. Internet porn doesn’t need to advertise. It’s the most successful industry on the net, and, in addition, everyone already knows about it.
Trying to trick people into going to your site is unnecessary as anyone who wants internet porn, and even those who don’t, can find it by searching for absolutely anything on any search engine. There aren’t people with internet access thinking “All I have is this web browser, free time and a door with a lock. How am I ever going to find pornography?”
And if someone doesn’t like porn, and they get tricked into clicking the link, you aren’t going to convert them.
No one accidentally hits a porn site and thinks “Hey, wait a minute, I never realized how much time I should be spending at www.animalsluts.com.”
So, in conclusion, if you are going to waste my time, at least put some effort into it, and try not to insult my intelligence too much while you’re at it. I may not be the sharpest bulb in the box, but I can’t honestly be as dumb as you make me out to be.
Powell can be reached at lpowell@campustimes.org.
