The Case for Spam
this entry brought to you by nirvana, "pennyroyal tea"
Answering machines were interesting devices, socially. People would always complain that they had a hard time getting a hold of one another, but once you got an answering machine machine you found out that no one left a message. It's not that no one called you. It's that no one cares about you enough to even say hi. The answering machine, which was supposed to help you keep up with your missed messages, becomes a reminder, then, that nobody cares about you.
Email behaves in a slightly similar fashion. You log on every day to check your email, only to find that nobody wants your attention but spammers and friends and family that like mass forwarding crap you don't care about.
However obnoxious it is, I've found that there's an upside to this. I have two email accounts: one in hotmail, which does not seem to filter out anything at all, and one paid email account that I only have for private use. It's what I consider my "main" email account.
Of course, I never get email in it, because nobody cares about me. Consequently, I sometimes go several days without checking it. There have been more than one occasion I've realized it's been two days without checking it, and I'll find an important email i should have read, and I feel terrible about it... but after trying to be better about that and returning to checking it every day after word, I never have anything.
My Hotmail, however, gets checked every day, period. Because I don't want the junk to get out of hand. Which means that when someone does email me through it (it's my public address, so I get real email, say... oh, once every three months?) I usually read it mere hours after it was sent, and definitely in the same day.
So my point is, spam is helpful. It makes sure I stay on top of things, and when you do, you can respond to the occasional real email in a prompt fashion, unlike the lazy, I-don't-even-care-to-check-it approach of my private account that nobody writes anyway. And even if no one ever wrote me, spam gives me something to do. Spam used to be a powerful source of stress, hatred, and unease. But I've moved past just accepting it. I like it. I love the satisfaction of deleting a big, fat blog of spam. And if there's a real email hidden in there, then it was all worth it, wasn't it? Unlike me "real" email account where I'm not even sure why I bother.
Trust me. If you got home and checked your answering machine and there were 17 messages on there, even if they were all telemarketters leaving messages, you would feel more important than if they never called.
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with love from CRS @ 6:32 PM
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Answering machines were interesting devices, socially. People would always complain that they had a hard time getting a hold of one another, but once you got an answering machine machine you found out that no one left a message. It's not that no one called you. It's that no one cares about you enough to even say hi. The answering machine, which was supposed to help you keep up with your missed messages, becomes a reminder, then, that nobody cares about you.
Email behaves in a slightly similar fashion. You log on every day to check your email, only to find that nobody wants your attention but spammers and friends and family that like mass forwarding crap you don't care about.
However obnoxious it is, I've found that there's an upside to this. I have two email accounts: one in hotmail, which does not seem to filter out anything at all, and one paid email account that I only have for private use. It's what I consider my "main" email account.
Of course, I never get email in it, because nobody cares about me. Consequently, I sometimes go several days without checking it. There have been more than one occasion I've realized it's been two days without checking it, and I'll find an important email i should have read, and I feel terrible about it... but after trying to be better about that and returning to checking it every day after word, I never have anything.
My Hotmail, however, gets checked every day, period. Because I don't want the junk to get out of hand. Which means that when someone does email me through it (it's my public address, so I get real email, say... oh, once every three months?) I usually read it mere hours after it was sent, and definitely in the same day.
So my point is, spam is helpful. It makes sure I stay on top of things, and when you do, you can respond to the occasional real email in a prompt fashion, unlike the lazy, I-don't-even-care-to-check-it approach of my private account that nobody writes anyway. And even if no one ever wrote me, spam gives me something to do. Spam used to be a powerful source of stress, hatred, and unease. But I've moved past just accepting it. I like it. I love the satisfaction of deleting a big, fat blog of spam. And if there's a real email hidden in there, then it was all worth it, wasn't it? Unlike me "real" email account where I'm not even sure why I bother.
Trust me. If you got home and checked your answering machine and there were 17 messages on there, even if they were all telemarketters leaving messages, you would feel more important than if they never called.
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