angry tech support agent rant for the week.

dear people of friendster, myspace, multiply, or wherever:


i have a strong dislike for spam.

part of it is because it is my job to have to deal with complaints about spamming every effing day you wouldn't believe it unless you have the same job that i do.

part of it is because i have been email-dependent for quite a long time, it's effing tiring running through spam every blessed day that i open my mailboxes. heck, i even have one online journal that a spammer has so beautifully attached itself to, i'm inundated with various gambling advertisements. of course, i've to be careful about filtering messages from that online journal, unless legit messages to me are inadvertently deleted.

i dislike spam, as much as i dislike a majority of repeatedly forwarded SMS jokes that simply clog my phone inbox with lame jokes asking me what's voldemort's first name. (it's leandro. and unless you've a knowledge of philippine show business during the 90s, you won't get the joke.)

(segue: i jabbered a message broadcaster among my officemates asking for more samples of jokes like that. one officemate, gwen, replied:

09:09PM gwen: natatawa ako sa hinihingi mo jade pero wala akong maisagot
09:09PM gwen: hahahah

i laughed at what you were asking, jade, but i can't think of an answer.)

anyways. my point is. please stop forwarding me useless messages that are practically spam. not just to me, but to other people; i'm sure there are many other people out there who could benefit from not getting emails asking for help for a poor little kid with brain cancer. if that email really came from someone who intends to give money to help the kid, they might as well give five or ten grand and not bother with asking people forward one stupid email.

people: there is no practical way of tracking to how many people is an email forwarded to so that they could raise 5 cents every time an email is forwarded. that kind of tracking would cost more money than it's worth, you might as well skip writing an email and go ahead an fill out a cheque.

also, friendster will have no way of tracking how many people are forwarding emails to their contacts to prevent friendster from closing.

email tracking is different from signing email petitions where which one signs one's name at the end of the email then forwards it to more people. it looks pretty, but come on: what's stopping anyone to append 1000 names the end of the email, instead of just one?

to put it simply: please stop spamming. it's a waste of time, a waste of mailbox space, and a waste of bandwidth. sending jokes are ok; dog knows i need a good laugh after spending an hour talking to a difficult customer. but being inundated with emails forwarded without giving any thought in what the message it contains...


oh fuck it all. i'm gonna shut up now.