I Heart Spam

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From: Tom Sweetnam (savamutt@trailnet.com)
Date: Thu May 04 2000 - 00:37:03 PDT


Since everyone else is singing their own praises around here, I'd like FoRK
to know that I too have been singled out for distinction in our digital
world..........

I hate it when some outfit that's spamming me every other day announces in
spam #67 that this latest "subscription" to new and exciting "product" is
absolutely "free".

As with all this recent Napster chatter, this disturbing phenomenon concerns
me a lot. Not the spam part mind you, but rather the fact that yet one more
struggling dotcom is giving me something for free that I would otherwise be
happy to pay for. I love being spammed you see. As a matter of fact, over
the past five years, I've signed up for every free e-mail service on the
planet, and every mailing list I've ever encountered too, so that I now own
1381 e-mail boxes, and receive on average about 14,000 e-mail messages a
day. Not even Mettalica and Santa Claus get that many.

Furthermore, I am perhaps the only case history at HOTMAIL, wherein I not
only didn't ask for anti-spam filters, but I requested instead, of every
other HOTMAIL subscriber, that they redirect all of their spam to my box
instead. Naturally, Microsoft took a dim view of my proposal, especially
after I received more than 18 million e-mail messages on the morning of Apr.
24th, 2000. They nipped my little enterprise in the bud as might be
expected, but "Debbie", from the "Obscure Phenomena and Anything Else That
Doesn't Fit Into Any Other Department Department" at Microsoft, did send me
a standard press release photo of Bill Gates, a letter of recognition, and a
free copy of Windows 2.1 on 5 ¼" floppies just yesterday, acknowledging that
18,761,436 e-mail messages in a single day (to an absolute nobody) was a
world record as far as Microsoft could determine, surpassing even their own
Consumer Complaint Department's single day record by a good two million, and
Microsoft, being an entity that really knows how to appreciate big numbers,
decided that my accomplishment was worthy of at least this minor
recognition.

Thanks Debbie. Eat you FoRKing hearts out you guys.


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