An Open Letter to Spammers

Good grief! Can you guys get any more stupid? Look, I shouldn't do this, but I'm going to do you a favor. Listen very carefully, because I'm only going to say this once:

• There is no part of my body that I feel needs to be made bigger. If anything, certain portions of my body need to be smaller, and I already understand that's only going to happen through diet and exercise.
• If I feel the need to deal with erectile disfunction (or have any other pharmaceutical need), I'm perfectly capable of having that conversation with my family doctor. I'm not going to have it with someone I don't know, and sending me hundreds of email messages doesn't mean we have a trusted relationship.
• I happen to work in the Information Technology industry. I'm not going to open emails that appear to come from ME, or from info@ or webmaster@ or administrator@ a domain that I control when I know I didn't send the message to myself. You couldn't possibly be more obvious if you put "THIS IS A SPAM MESSAGE" in the subject line.
• Speaking of the subject line, I'm not going to read email messages where the subject line is in Russian, or when the subject line consists of nonsensical phrases like "HoracioPuffyDick" or "Pendulum Butterfly" (I'm not making these up - these are actual messages that were blocked by my spam filter), or when it consists of a random string of characters, 0r wh3n u c1ever1y m1x l3tt3rs and numb3r$ t0 try t0 g3t ar0und my f1lt3rs. Whoever told you these were good strategies was lying to you.
• Emails that come from email addresses that consist of random characters (e.g., szosqisje@[some domain name]) will never, ever, be opened. Ever. Geez, at least most viruses and worms are clever enough to pretend to come from some real person that I might know. See previous comment about liars. Same goes for nonsensical domain names (e.g., hilarie0rax@olgafilippova.com).
• The most obvious of all are the ones where the nonsensical address is associated with a nonsensical subject line, e.g., an email from "petitioning5@kajconsulting.com" with the subject line "TamaraBodypartWhopping." (Once again, I'm not making these up, I'm looking at them right now in my spam quarantine folder.)
• I'm not going to buy cheap software from you. I know that what you're selling is, if not counterfeit, then being sold illegally, e.g., "OEM" licenses that can only be legally sold with a new PC. See previous comment about working in the IT industry. I am, in fact, hoping and praying that Microsoft tracks you down and nails your sorry ass to the wall.
• I'm not interested in a counterfeit Rolex watch. I outgrew the need to be pretentious several decades ago.
• I don't care about your opinion on which penny stocks are going to go through the roof next week.
• Sending me several identical emails in a row is actually counterproductive. (I'm sorry, that was a big word, wasn't it? It means that it makes it even less likely that I'll actually read one of your messages.)
• I'm not interested in helping you transfer several million dollars out of some third-world country. My God, are people still actually falling for that one? It's been around since before there was e-mail! You'd have to have been living in a cave for the last ten or twenty years to not know this is a scam!
• I'm not looking for an on-line institution of higher learning to sell me a diploma, and I'm even less likely to be interested when the email you send me about said institution is riddled with obvious misspellings. (But you can keep sending me those - at least they're good for a laugh when I'm having a tough day.)
• I'm not going to fall for the phony PayPal or [fill in the blank] Bank message telling me that I have to change my password right now or you're going to shut off my account. I'm particularly not going to fall for it when you send it to an on-line hosted email account (like Hotmail or gmail) that I have never associated with any of my bank accounts and/or when it claims to be from a bank that I've never done business with. What I will do is forward your email message to the fraud division of the institution in question with, once again, a fervent prayer that they track you down, lock you up, and throw away the key.

Look - you're not clever. You're not funny. You're not cute. You're just sad and annoying. Do the on-line world a favor: give it up and go get a real job. But I know you won't. You're not smart enough to know how stupid you are. Your only accomplishment is the creation of a very lucrative market for spam filtering software and services. Since I am involved in selling those, I suppose I should thank you, but I just can't bring myself to do it.

Thanks for listening - I just needed to get that off my chest.