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The Rules Of Spam

Rule #0: Spam is theft.

  • Angel’s Commentary: Spammers believe it’s okay to steal a little bit from each person on the Internet at once.

Rule #1: Spammers lie.

  • Russel’s Admonition: Always assume that there is a measurable chance that the entity you are dealing with is a spammer.
  • Lexical Contradiction: Spammers will redefine any term in order to disguise their abuse of Internet resources.
  • Sharp’s Corollary: Spammers attempt to re-define “spamming” as that which they do not do.
  • Finnell’s Corollary: Spammers define “remove” as “validate.”

Rule #2: If a spammer seems to be telling the truth, see Rule #1.

  • Crissman’s Corollary: A spammer, when caught, blames his victims.
  • Moore’s Corollary: Spammer’s lies are seldom questioned by mainstream media.

Rule #3: Spammers are stupid.

  • Krueger’s Corollary: Spammer lies are really stupid.
  • Pickett’s Commentary: Spammer lies are boring.
    • Salamandir’s Rant: If I didn’t want to hear about it from the spammer, regardless of how amusing, profound, ironic, or whatever you find it, what makes you think I want to hear about it in regular email, on your blog, or verbally?
  • Russell’s Corollary: Never underestimate the stupidity of spammers.
  • Spinosa’s Corollary: Spammers assume everybody is more stupid than themselves.
  • Spammer’s Standard of Discourse: Threats and intimidation trump facts and logic.
  • James’ Axioms of Spammers’ Beliefs:
    • Bandwidth is infinite. It possible for infinite messages to occupy the same box at the same time.
    • The less value a message has, the more people want to see it.
    • The more someone is offended, the more likely they are to buy.
    • Reward is inversely proportional to the work done to earn it.

Rule #4: The natural course of a spamming business is to go bankrupt.

  • Rules-Keeper Shaffer’s Refrain: Spammers routinely prove the Rules of spam are valid.