Do you ever wonder what people are thinking when they send you spam? Or not thinking?

spamsightings.blogspot

Junk mail in your snail mailbox never seemed as bad as this. Email, text messages, blogs…it’s all the same, links couched in ridiculously-constructed messages that someone must still be clicking or the spammers would surely cease to spam. (And now I’ve said “spam” enough times that Monty Python’s “Spam” is in my head.)

I also resent the fact that I need a junk email just for ordering online. It wasn’t always a junk email. Whoever has sold my email address, I hope your house gets papered in spam printouts.

Sometimes the spammers try to get clever, especially on blog posts: “Keep up this good work, you have a nice blog over here with much good information!” –which is pleasant until you get to their 5-mile long email address.

Sometimes they don’t even try: “Yeah, that’s the ticekt, sir or ma’am.”

Sometimes it’s funny, misspellings and all: “Well maacdamia nuts, how about that.”

But sometimes spam goes beyond stupid.

One of the Facebook pages I moderate is for Alzheimer’s and dementia care. When you look at the statistics and think that even if you don’t get the disease yourself, you may very well be living with it as a caregiver or family member or friend, you’ll realize this is not the most lighthearted of subjects.

We have a community of caregivers, therapists and persons with the disease who share their stories and ask questions. They also post links to related Facebook pages or other resources.

And then I get this:

I’ve got people posting heartbreaking stories, and this guy’s posting about FILTERS.

What do AC filters have to do with dementia? Yeah. Not a whole lot. They didn’t the first two times he posted this either.

Part of me would love to talk to this person and ask him why he thinks he’s above common decency. But there’s that saying of “Don’t feed the trolls,” so I just delete the link (again), go to his own page (again) and report him to Facebook (again).

It may be the passive approach, but if someone’s already this lost in sales-mongering as to keep posting the same inconsequential message over and over, they probably won’t understand why I object–or care.

Anyway, if I start talking back to spammers now, I don’t think I’ll stop!

What kind of spam mind-boggles you?