Scenes from my spam folder: I’m not sure what’s going on in Global E-Mail Spam HQ these days. (In my imagination, Global E-Mail Spam HQ is located under an extinct volcano somewhere; it’s where the world’s spam masterminds decide it’s time to cease the “clean the inside of your windshield” campaign and spin-up the global push for this season’s “blankets with sleeves” or whatever.)
Anyway, I’ve been getting a lot of blog comment spam that starts out as a generic compliment about the entry — one might think they were actual comments, if one hadn’t already seen oodles of identical, vaguely complimentary comments on other entries. Though the true nature of the spam becomes obvious at the end, since they’re signed “Regards, Charcoal Grill.”
This latest batch typically doesn’t include any URLs; presumably, they’re from comment spammers trying to test or prime spam filters. I guess it’s marginally better than seeing comments that simply say “Test.”
Didja ever wonder about e-mail? He wasn’t even talking about spam, but on this past Sunday’s 60 Minutes, resident curmudgeon Andy Rooney shared his particularly curmudgeonly thoughts on paper mail versus e-mail. In spectacularly stereotypical and wholly unenlightening fashion, he personified the generational divide on attitudes about e-mail, lamenting the decline in paper mail vis-a-vis the Post Office’s proposed service cuts.
Basically, it was a “damn kids with your rock and roll music — get off my lawn” screed, sans fist-shaking.
However, Rooney’s sign-off line was slightly interesting: “I would rather have a mailman or woman deliver junk mail to me, than to get an e-mail.” The sheer crotchety posturing notwithstanding, I sympathize with this sentiment a little bit… at least when it comes to junk paper mail versus junk e-mail.
Because the costs of junk mail / direct mail are still borne by the sender, as opposed to the economics of spam, which is essentially free to the spammer and where the costs are borne by everyone else, it serves as a filtering mechanism that towers over whatever legal and regulatory barriers that people put up. Which is still an advantage over e-mail.
The wind has blown, though, and paper mail’s time has gone (even counting a tiny renaissance in direct paper mail as a marketing tool, as a way to cut through e-mail overload). Though I don’t think it will ever disappear completely — there’ll always be a niche for people who want a premium, physical mail experience.
As goes e-mail, so goes asynchronous messaging? For all the wailing about e-mail, I’m also wondering how much longer e-mail’s primacy is going to be. We’ve seen that the youngsters already think e-mail is a tool for “old” people, preferring mostly-synchronous SMS and Facebook messaging. Maybe Google Wave will end up ruling over us all (I can’t tell — I still don’t have my invite), or some other communications paradigm that blends synchronous and asynchronous aspects, seamlessly and intelligently filtering through recipient preferences and cascading down integrated delivery modes in ways that my asynchronized, e-mail ossified brain won’t be able to comprehend, at which time I’ll delivery my own curmudgeonly rant.
Have a thought about spam or e-mail and future modes of communication? Leave a comment.
Regards,
Charcoal Grill
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