My mailbox has lately become deluged with ‘Returned Mail’ spam. Someone somewhere has been using my dickonedwards.co.uk domain as the return address for their unnecessary little emails. Apparently there’s nothing I can do about this. Except echo Bill Hicks’s words about asking for people who work in advertising to please kill themselves. I have no problem with advertising in its proper place. But spam email, however automated, is the result of certain human beings deciding that spam is desirous to humanity. They are wrong. They must desist and dismantle their software which causes spam, and do something else with their time at once. Get a job in proper marketing if they must.
One of the many awful jobs I had to endure in my twenties was cold calling in a telesales office. I was paid to phone the blameless residents of Bristol, taking their names from the phone directory, and would try to sell them burglar alarms. I lasted about a week before the irony of the situation hit me: I was, after all, breaking and entering by phone. I literally walked out mid-session, and can still recall the ponytailed boss shouting after me “Oh you’re off then? You’ll be back.”
It’s not as if the money was any good: the equivalent of minimum wage. And I should add that this was literally the only position that my Job Centre could find for me at the time; I ran the risk of losing benefit by not giving it a go. But once I realised what it entailed, I preferred to risk starvation. There’s no two ways about it. Unsolicited emails, phone calls or texts are wrong. I would add to this the so-called ‘chuggers’: charity workers who leap at you on the street with their clipboards. I once shouted at a particularly persistent chugger in Charing Cross: “Other jobs are available! Ones which leave people alone! Please get one!” As you might imagine, this was completely out of character for me. He really pushed me too far, following me up the road as I was trying to avoid him.
The only permissable unsolicited mail I can think of is the occasional distribution by letter box of flyers for events and local services, and leaflets from political parties during elections. Material which people might actually be interested in looking at.
But the practice of sending out gibberish email to someone without their consent, while using a return address of someone ELSE without THEIR consent, not only is morally wrong, but seems like a complete waste of time for all parties. Why DO they do it? It can only be out of pure spite against humanity. It does rather bring out one’s inner Daily Mail Reader.
