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.