05 Sep 2006
Spam + Blogs = Trouble

SPAMSPAM is really just a symptom of a deeper problem: advertising run wild. We can't even get our kids to eat oranges without cartoon stickers. We are pitched constantly on nearly everything - commercial TV has become effectively one continuous advertisement with the advent of "the crawl" at the bottom of the screen, telling you what brand of soap to use or which car to drive or what's on next week, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.

Indianapolis no longer has the "Hoosier Dome" - it's the "RCA Dome". And never mind that RCA shut down operations here and moved them to Mexico long before the dome was built! Our next stadium is going to be the Lucas Oil Stadium - and you know what a huge oil producer Indiana is! Not! It's just more SPAM, after all, except rather than cluttering our computers it clutters our public spaces.

It's not even possible to pick up a book or go to movie anymore without being subjected to some form of sales pitch. Advertising SPAM has even invaded our final destination. There is no place immune from it's constant clamor and chatter.

So why are we so indignant about our inboxes, blogs and newsgroups being constantly bombarded with "BUY NOW AND SAVE!"? Why isn't our indignation spread around a bit more - my physical mailbox is as full of SPAM as my electronic one, and yet you never hear of a mass protest against low postage rates for direct mailers.

I ran Google AdWords across this blog for a bit, until I was so insulted and outraged by them and their constant whining and squealing that I figured the tiny amount of revenue I drew from them simply wasn't worth the aggravation they caused me - I never got a complaint about any of them, it just bothered the Hel out of me to see advertising for things I neither endorse nor have ever heard of crawling all over my web page.

I just want all of them to shut up and go away: I'm perfectly capable of making complex buying decisions on my own with being sold to death, and greatly resent the constant, ambient noise that advertising in all it's obnoxious forms has come to represent.

Splogs are the latest thing in online scams -- and they could smother the Internet like a pestilence. By Charles C. Mann from Wired magazine.

(link) [Wired News: Top Stories]

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