Antique & Classic Cars Blog

“Spam” unduly aggrandizes one of the great nuisances of the computer age–one that attaches like mold to this website, as to so many around the world. True Spam is food. Canned, yes. Subject to fun-pokery by the Monty Python crew and others, yes. But it goes well on bread and will outlast the cupboard you put it in. Get struck with the right hankering and it’s flat-out tasty.

Computer spam has less use than the chewed gum you stepped on on the sidewalk–that, at least, might disclose that your work shoes could use a re-sole. Spam is the most empty-headed dreamer’s fantasy of a basis for commerce ever propagated. No one clicks those messages. No one. Not one person. Anywhere. In the world. No matter how bored or lonely or possessed of rash impulses to do useless things.

You can’t validate spam on trivial cost. Gravel is indivisibly cheap, with a value too miniscule to discuss at the grain level. So someone prints your corporate logo on each gritty bit and scatters a kiloton on driveways throughout the country. “A few people,” they insist, “will scoop up a handful, see ‘Compliments of Rudy’s Carpets,’ and reward you with an order.”

R-i-i-i-i-ght. The same people who bought when you put your company name on special safflower seeds so it showed through hood-splats when birds ate it. “Ohhh! I just washed that! —wait, does that say ‘Rudy’s Carpets?’…”

Computer spam has no use, no value, no point. Zero. Nada. It is wasted effort calling the spam provider, receiving the bill, putting postage on it and expending mail-room employee time to carry it from the In bin to the Outgoing Mail bin.

So spare us. Spare yourselves. If you’re going to engage in activity with no productive purpose, take up graffiti on your own buildings. While no one will pay for it, at least someone might look at it–which is more than can be said of spam.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 5:59 pm and is filed under Car stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.