Spam

Don't get me wrong: I hate spam. I wouldn't mind if every spammer on the planet was vaporized overnight.

But I don't blame them for spamming. Not one bit.

There's nothing immoral or unethical about it, and as for illegal? Anti-spam laws are so poorly crafted that e-mailing my closest friends to tell them my car is for sale is against the law in 12 states. So I don't blame spammers for spamming.

I blame you.

If you've ever bought anything -- anything at all -- based on an unsolicited e-mail, then you are on the Axis of Internet Evil. You are the problem. You're the one who should be locked up for ten years with nothing to read but Microsoft user manuals.

Every time you buy something from a spammer, you are personally responsible for about half a billion more spam e-mails going out.

The reason spammers spam is that it works. Not only that, the return on investment is astronomical. If only one out of a million people receiving a spam message buys something, it was worth it to the spammer.

And since the figure is higher than one out of a million, why on earth should spammers stop spamming? Where's the incentive to stop if the market has proven definitively that it works?

Should a spammer stop to be a nice guy?

Right. Like tobacco companies and fast food vendors should stop hawking their products, which are legal and which people want and which make money for them.

There is only one way to put the spammers out of business and that is to make it uneconomical for them to keep doing it, and there is only one way to do that which is to vote with your keyboard and stop buying from them!

You downloading porn for only 89 cents a day: Don't you be bitching about spam to me. You there applying for the lowest mortgage rates in years: You suck. You over in the corner trying to enlarge your schvanz or keep it up for hours or become more manly overnight: I hope it falls off.

And you with the world's smallest digital camera?

Bite me.