Spam Rage
Why do people get mad about spam? It’s kind of funny to watch sometimes. Paroxysms of anger. Holy quests to eliminate it. Rightous screeds proclaiming the utter evil that are spammers. Frankly, it’s not the sort of thing that you would expect from a lot of the intelligent people whence it comes.
So what’s the explanation? I believe it all rests on a simple, but basic, misunderstanding. They fail to view the fact of spammers as an inevitable feature of the e-mail system as it stands. (And it is.) Instead, they treat spammers as a member of a social group (users of e-mail) that have broken the codes of that group. Social ostracism, and all that entails, is the natural and instinctual reaction.
But it’s a bad reaction. It’s not rational. Because of the systemic and inevitable nature of spam, and the hugeness of the system, no social sanctions are going to do any good. Social ostracism is worthless, because spammers don’t heed the codes of e-mail.
Spam is nothing more than a disease of the internet. A parasite. They don’t get mad and indignant at viruses do they?
So where do they get this misunderstanding? It’s an attractive proposition, sure. We’re all one big happy family. And spammers are just some of the less desirable members of that family. They can be reformed, or banished. These are all intuitions that evolved in an environment where pretty much anyone we had contact with was either someone to run from, someone to kill, someone to apply social pressure to, or someone to heed to social pressure from. In the modern world, on the other hand, we have interactions with a lot more people than we are in a position to apply social pressure to. Not everyone has really adapted to this reality yet.
Maybe it’ll come with time.
