A hypothetical: what if this blog post - piping hot off the press, hard-fitting, oozing topicality as usual - registered on your collective consciousness neither via the mild ripple of the blogosphere, nor through the everyman's land of your facebook home page, but rather through a direct breach of your email inbox? What if I, dissatisfied with my audience of equally tired stalwarts, made so bold to shove this thing down your plural throat in a targeted campaign aimed at expanding readership? What would happen if I s-worded all of you; what would you do if I spammed you?
Probably become quite annoyed, a reaction of similar ilk to your reaction against my rhetorical premeditation of your reaction. For I have observed, or finally come to think about, a very strange general phenomenon of late; from which the premeditation that annoyed you so much is but one fair extrapolation. That is this: no one on this digital earth seems to be able to cope with the contemporary disaster of questionably relevant email traffic. I don't understand this phenomenon at all. So I shall use this medium for the purpose it serves best: venting my splenetic aporia against a world checked out into cyber-rage.
A preamble before we roll: this post may well turn out the most offensive tirade I've ever typed, so widespread is the problem, so alone do I feel in my aggressive indifference to it. But it is also the most deeply felt post I have attempted in a while; unquestionably the most urgent, at any rate. I imagine I'll generate far more hate mail than rallying cries for this effort, but in case you should agree, please raise your hand and join the new movement I'm currently plotting: Spam Is Not That Bad, Affluent Complainers Please Chill the Fuck Out. For those who stand by their righteous indignation, bring on the hate mail. You will note the philosophical equanimity with which I welcome a clogged inbox.
To clarification of terms: I'll be avoiding discussion of spam proper, the background noise of the cyber universe which all email service providers manage to block out but for a few open windows from time to time. This kind of spam - truly undirected and opportunistic, trying to meet with any and every reader out there - is a minimal part of a cyber human's everyday online life. The rare bird that makes it through the highly effective filters, however, will underscore the point I will thrash out lengthily below. That is, the odd Russian Beauty for sale, the odd humble request for bank details from Nigeria, the odd remedy for erectile dysfunction, are all part of life's spicy variety. They are nothing more than a mischievous child attempting to put stinging nettles in your underpants, whom you catch with ease and send along with a little tousle of the hair and a playful smack. And as for those unlucky few who end up with sore perinea from all those stinging nettles - well, they are quite silly, and they provide a good laugh as red-raw collateral damage.
The kind of spam I shall treat, then, is the more ordinary variety: the stuff that comes in through those various channels you have set up to direct things of vague interest into your inbox, or the noticeboard stuff that you have to receive for work purposes etc. In other words, list-spam. As a PhD student, I am by definition interested in everything; so along the way I have signed up for many a list. I get emails from the Spanish-speakers-society, whose events I never attend because I don't speak Spanish. I get emails from left-leaning organisations, whose events I never attend because I find political commitment quite uncomfortable (I'm working on it). I get emails from the Cambridge Capture the Flag Club, whose events I never attend because I find the sport quite pale and tiresome. I choose not to unsubscribe from these lists because they tell me, in no uncertain terms and at no uncertain times of the day (usually 10:32, 12:46 and 16:21 respectively), about other things I could be doing at that particular time. They remind me that I am a person with the capacity to be elsewhere and doing otherwise at that particular moment, and that it is by a mere effort of maintaining a consistent identity that I neglect these alternatives and choose to hunch over my computer writing about Juvenal's tendency to thingify the human. In a world where I cannot possibly do everything, I can at least read the subject lines about doing things and ignore the content.
But by far the most relevant list I subscribe to is the UK Classicists' list: a smorgasbord of job adverts, seminar timetables, special lecture postings, and all things classical of interest to anyone, even if it is just so for the lonely person that posts. The esoteric nature of the emails is sometimes amped up, the conversations sparked sometimes sprawl on, and recently (the event which engendered this blog) a voice in the ether finally stood up to be counted, following a (to him) particularly irritating intervention on the part of a pathological spammer. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. And the snap came hard and fast:
Equally Annoying Dude'
'Dear friends and colleagues,
Pardon my intrusion, but I think it was about time someone said something about the current situation of the Classicists list. Some time ago a member of the Papyrologist mailing list circulated the following email, which I quote:
I appreciate Lucian's subtlety and diplomacy, but I think there are some things that need to be spelt out a bit more clearly. Could people who want to express their personal musings publicly, ranging from their psychological state, their literary taste or their more or less insulting feelings towards colleagues please find a relevant list to do this on? I am sure the internet is not devoid of alternative fora for the free expression of one's feelings and frustrations. This one is in principle devoted to information and queries regarding papyrology and related areas. Let's keep it at that. We get enough emails in our inbox without the ones we did not quite subscribe to...
Thanks.
I personally feel that the same has been going on with the Classicist mailing list for quite some time now (and as I've been told, several other lists too). Although Asterix can be amusing, and the current situation in Libya and NATO may be interesting to some of the members, this list was created - I humbly believe - for academic purposes, and the circulation of academic information and queries. I personally find it rather annoying to have to wake up to a spammed inbox every other day, and I trust this may apply to many of you.
So please let's try to keep things on this list academically related. As the email quoted above nicely puts it, Forums and 'alternative' mailing lists surely exist for more general discussions and expressions of one's own ideas.
Best wishes to all,
Equally Annoying Dude'
I sniffed a very familiar smell. Whenever a list threatens to run off topic and inboxes everywhere begin to feel suffocated with 'spam', there is always one valiant soldier who steps up to say: 'Enough! Liberate us from this tyranny of pointless information! You can take our second-lives, but you will never take our limited yet ever-increasing megabytes!' The crowd roars, mindful of every affront to their digital dignity ever suffered at the hands of these ruthless spammers. 'We are not interested in your petty opinions! Voice them elsewhere! Moderator, please! Give us cold hard fact, the kind of fact that this list was designed to communicate. Purge these undesirably marginal elements. If you don't, who knows what kind of nasty index finger RSI will develop? Then there will be no one left to read your list. We will all be in digit rehabilitation twiddling our (thankfully) better-preserved thumbs.'
Last time I checked, my Gmail account had a capacity of 7634 MB. I signed up in 2006 and have not deleted a single email since. The inbox is 23% full. If I fail to die before I reach capacity and find myself forced to delete emails, that's fine: I'll search and delete anything with the word 'facebook' in it. Plan B, I'll delete anything with the words 'sorry, I can't supervise your undergrads at this late point in the day. Please be more organised in the future.' And that should do me. The fury is obviously not an issue of space then - for memory storage is about as expensive and rare as a piece of fluff from my infrequently scrubbed belly button. There is something far more sinister and irrational at play here - something difficult to put a finger on, especially when that finger has been lovingly opening unloved spam all day long.
After a significant hour of thought committed to the topic, I can conclude that the whole world has a bad case of obsessive compulsive disorder. For some reason, the deletion of an email is seen as a hugely time-consuming and laborious task instead of an item towards the more pleasant end of life's possible tribulations. But deletion itself is a questionable practice in the first place. Why bother with deletion when space is not even an issue, let alone of the essence? My theory is that an inbox is beginning to function more and more as an extension of the self, competing with - even supplanting - more conventional markers of identity (a room of one's own, for instance). People are starting to feel anxious when this online repository is not completely in order. Spam represents a threat to this order, and one's sovereignty in controlling the database of the self. No one wants to swim in the filth of a contaminated inbox. They would rather sleep in a bed of ear wax than allow a miscategorised email remain in its incorrect folder for up to an hour. Every piece of spam rocks and wrecks the delicate garden of a tidy cyberself.
Another rankler is the narrow-minded and self-centred policing of relevance that the antispammer is ever indulging. A dedicated antispammer feels that anything s/he is not interested in is spam, without realising one person's spam is another person's specialty. Of course lists send in content which is 99 per cent irrelevant; that's the price paid for the odd gem. Even if the email is only of interest to one person on the list - nay, even if it fails to catch the attention of any - its existence is justified by the fact that at least one other person (sender) thought it might be interesting. So-called spam is the lowest stakes game of irrelevancy possible. But people think of every piece of boring written drivel in the same league as an afternoon of detention with their garrulous mustachioed aunty who can't stop talking about her hemorrhoids. They're actually quite different things. You can't walk out on an aunty in her hour of need, even if that need is not particular to you, and is spammed all over everyone, every day. You can, however, choose not to read an email. I choose not to read things all the time. A PhD is in fact nothing more than the sum of things you have avoided reading.
Spam rage is by no means society's number one problem, but it is certainly up there for sheer levels of disproportionate reaction. Not to mention disproportionate self-awareness about engaging in the activity oneself. 'Sorry for spamming, but...'. This is my most loathed email opening of all possible email openings. Anything that begins with an apology for spamming, I stop reading immediately - not because it is spam, but because it perpetuates the ill-founded notion that there is something wrong with spam. If there is a crime in question here, it is precisely this: the demonisation of spam. I look forward to the day when spam is redeemed and restored to its rightful pedestal as generator of some of the only opportunities to run into random crap in an increasingly mechanistic existence. I see the bright future wherein 'SPAM!' will be a subject line specifically designed to pique the reader's interest. A time when you will spam me unapologetically, and there will be no perceived annoyance for which you will feel obliged to apologise. I will write an email back to the list thanking you for this email and asking you on a date. I will send another email saying that wasn't intended for the list. You will send an email to the list saying no worries. I will send one back saying cool so how about that date. And all will ignore our inane chatter with the minimal fuss of rounded people whose inboxes are an appropriately small part of their rich and varied lives.
After a significant hour of thought committed to the topic, I can conclude that the whole world has a bad case of obsessive compulsive disorder. For some reason, the deletion of an email is seen as a hugely time-consuming and laborious task instead of an item towards the more pleasant end of life's possible tribulations. But deletion itself is a questionable practice in the first place. Why bother with deletion when space is not even an issue, let alone of the essence? My theory is that an inbox is beginning to function more and more as an extension of the self, competing with - even supplanting - more conventional markers of identity (a room of one's own, for instance). People are starting to feel anxious when this online repository is not completely in order. Spam represents a threat to this order, and one's sovereignty in controlling the database of the self. No one wants to swim in the filth of a contaminated inbox. They would rather sleep in a bed of ear wax than allow a miscategorised email remain in its incorrect folder for up to an hour. Every piece of spam rocks and wrecks the delicate garden of a tidy cyberself.
Another rankler is the narrow-minded and self-centred policing of relevance that the antispammer is ever indulging. A dedicated antispammer feels that anything s/he is not interested in is spam, without realising one person's spam is another person's specialty. Of course lists send in content which is 99 per cent irrelevant; that's the price paid for the odd gem. Even if the email is only of interest to one person on the list - nay, even if it fails to catch the attention of any - its existence is justified by the fact that at least one other person (sender) thought it might be interesting. So-called spam is the lowest stakes game of irrelevancy possible. But people think of every piece of boring written drivel in the same league as an afternoon of detention with their garrulous mustachioed aunty who can't stop talking about her hemorrhoids. They're actually quite different things. You can't walk out on an aunty in her hour of need, even if that need is not particular to you, and is spammed all over everyone, every day. You can, however, choose not to read an email. I choose not to read things all the time. A PhD is in fact nothing more than the sum of things you have avoided reading.
Spam rage is by no means society's number one problem, but it is certainly up there for sheer levels of disproportionate reaction. Not to mention disproportionate self-awareness about engaging in the activity oneself. 'Sorry for spamming, but...'. This is my most loathed email opening of all possible email openings. Anything that begins with an apology for spamming, I stop reading immediately - not because it is spam, but because it perpetuates the ill-founded notion that there is something wrong with spam. If there is a crime in question here, it is precisely this: the demonisation of spam. I look forward to the day when spam is redeemed and restored to its rightful pedestal as generator of some of the only opportunities to run into random crap in an increasingly mechanistic existence. I see the bright future wherein 'SPAM!' will be a subject line specifically designed to pique the reader's interest. A time when you will spam me unapologetically, and there will be no perceived annoyance for which you will feel obliged to apologise. I will write an email back to the list thanking you for this email and asking you on a date. I will send another email saying that wasn't intended for the list. You will send an email to the list saying no worries. I will send one back saying cool so how about that date. And all will ignore our inane chatter with the minimal fuss of rounded people whose inboxes are an appropriately small part of their rich and varied lives.
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