Spammers: The UnGood, The Bad and The Ugly

Remember the good old days? You know, when times were simpler? When gasoline was $0.99 a gallon? When you were allowed to disagree with the President without being called an extremist freak? When Spam was meat in a can? Oh, I do. I look back on those days both fondly and with fear. Fear because as soon as I hear myself saying "remember the good ol days" I realize I must be getting old. And I can't be old. Right? Anyway, the good old days when spam was meat in can......and now...well, that word has taken on a whole new meaning. As part of my highly intensive research that I do for all my hubs (insert sarcasm and eye roll here) I just walked into my 11 year old's room and said, "What's spam?" Her friend didn't miss a beat and said, "You mean like on email?" I would venture to guess if I mentioned meat in a can they would look at me like my cheese had slid off my cracker. Not to say that it hasn't but you know what I mean....

So while for many of us, Spam used to be something that we heard of but never really experienced (except sometimes when that weird relative would surface during the holidays), now pretty much anyone with an internet connection and a pulse has to deal with spam on a daily basis. I hate spam. It annoys the ever loving crap out of me. While I used to find it somewhat amusing to open my inbox and find someone asking me if I needed to enhance my man candy, I now just really don't have the time to filter through the 428 junk emails I got to salvage the 4 that were actually meaningful. And what is with the people who spam comments on forums, blogs, etc? Telemarketers used to be the bottom feeders, now apparently they've gotten jobs surfing the net and interrupting conversations. (Now before you start placing flaming bags of poo on my step, I was a telemarketer in college. I quit when a 3 year old told me to get a real job though.) But really, what is worse? The shameless and unrelenting spammers trying to make a buck in a sinking economy or the naive ignoramus morons who fall for it? I mean, obviously it has to work a little or the whole concept would have died alongside the chia pet, right?

Today, I encountered what I consider to be the absolute worst kind of spamming. As many of you who follow my writing know, I monitor my child's internet use very heavily. So today, I was perusing my daughter's facebook account to make sure all was on the up and up. On someone's page was this woman (and I use that term loosely), basically propositioning a man (who shall remain nameless as to protect his identity) to come and have an affair with her. Well, it immediately ticked me off. I put my two cents worth in and told the woman (again, loose interpretation) to do that crap privately so that the kids and brain carrying people on the site didn't have to witness it. Then I clicked on her profile and realized a couple things. First of all, the profile is most likely fake, (as the freakin moron put an age that didn't match up with her birth date....shouldn't spammers at least have to pass first grade math?) and secondly, I really hope the idiot stick who she was propositioning feels really good about his manhood because she had posted the EXACT same line of BS to about 14 other dudes in the past twenty minutes. Then on her profile she provided links to "My other pics that facebook don't let me post" (apparently grammar wasn't a pre-requisite either),and that link goes directly to a site with pornographic pictures and invitations for adultery, swinging and some things I didn't even know existed.

So I reported the person as providing a fake profile. Now whether or not Facebook does anything about is yet to be seen, and really, it won't matter because even if that low life loser disappears, another will take her place tomorrow. The thing is, though, I got really angry with her for posting that kind of crap in a public place where children could see it, but then I realized that the people she is spamming were pretty much asking for it. They were all "friends" with her. Which again, leads me to the question, do you even know who your friends are? So who's to blame? The freaks who have nothing better to do all day than sit around and proposition people, or the freaks who accept the invitations? It kind of goes back to meat in a can? Is it freaky that they make it or freaky that people eat it?