One man's junk is another's

I was late. In fact, I was late at Putney station. Deciding to get a cup of coffee, I popped into the little shop on the platform and inside I spotted a copy of The Independent.

A letter from a spamer caught my eye. Actually, that's wrong, it was from Mr K Spamer who was complaining about spamming (you know, sending people junk emails).

I want to complain about spamming too. Much as I'd like to side with Mr Spamer, me and Mr Spamer are moaning about different things.

Mr Spamer doesn't like the term spamming because he feels it is too close to his name and, presumably, people take the mickey out of him.

Well I can see his point because, as you may have noticed, my surname is both a noun and an adjective - longing, longish, longer, longfellow and longueur, which given my job is rather embarrassing (go look it up in a dictionary).

So, I really don't give a toss about his point.

Except I hate spammers, or in deference to Mr K Spamer (not to be confused with spammer), those gits that fill my email in-box with useless, puerile and generally crap messages.

The messages are generally inane. 'How to make $10,000 in 60 days,' said one message from a Christopher Erickson.

The message said that he was $35,000 in hock to his friends, then someone sent him a program (no I don't know what the program is - who cares). 'Initially I sent out 10,000 emails. It only cost me about $15,' he said with bravado. 'I promised myself I would not cheat anyone, no matter how much money it cost me,' he added. Well I don't know about you, but I feel better already.

But why the hell is he telling me? I get very few emails from people saying: ' I just won #4,000,000 on the Lottery.' Perhaps it is an American thing - although you are lucky because you are not a journalist. It's all well and good Mr K Spamer moaning, but as a journalist you not only get unsolicited emails from mad Americans but also from mad PR marketing types - even the odd managing director. You even get 300Kb attachments (here is a photo of our MD) if you are distinctly unlucky.

Why don't they ask first if I want them to clog up my email box with press releases? What is it with this email stuff that makes people so stupid? Do they like getting crap via email so they assume others do as well? Why can't they just send a simple message (via email if they want) that says: 'Would you like to receive email press releases?' Is that so difficult?

Frankly, I think we should demand that email systems only be sold to people with more brains than a shoe rack. Tough I know, but I think shoe racks have had their chance.

On the other hand, if any shoe rack has a Ferrari, a crate of Budweiser or Gina Davis' phone number to give me, you know where to reach me - any time, any day.

Chris Long is a freelance IT journalist.