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How Powerful is the Turn-Off Power of Spam?
JayBonci asks: "Here's a question to the Slashdot readerbase. How powerful is the turnoff power of spam? With an upcoming political election in the United States, and a nation not very-well defended against mass unsolicited emailings, what kind of anti-marketing medium is spam? Could a spammer push out millions of: 'V0te for G3orge W. Bush!' or 'J0hn Kerry for Presidnet@', in the hopes to turn off (or on) voters. Spam marketing penetration is terrible (I've heard figures like .001%), but how powerful is its anti-marketing capabilities? An interesting discussion for the Slashdot audience." How often do you make the decision to NOT buy something form a company because you know they engage in spamming activities?
"V0te for G3orge W. Bush!' or 'J0hn Kerry for Presidnet@'"
/. editors run stories through a spell check. It should be "'Vote for George W. Bush!' or 'John Kerry for Presidnet'."
Please
No sig for you!!
let's see.
1) I don't buy Viagra.
2) I don't like to watch pictures of my naked next door neighbour.
3) I'm quite happy with my university degree the way it is, thanks.
4) And, I'd rather not apply for another mortgage.
All in all, spam doesn't turn me off of any companies, because none of the companies that I *would* have bought from (wisely) don't use spam in the first place.
.001% may just be what wins the chair
As the world becomes more and more aware of what spam really is (crap), it's influence grows less and less. Most people are already decided on an election, and Jesus H Tap Dancing Christ, I hope those who are stupid enough to vote based on "Bush/Kerry sent me spam, so to hell with them!!!" just don't vote.
So, in conclusion, I think most people who receive email from G30rg3 Bu$h realize that the Republican party likely did not send that message, and mail from J0hn |3rrY is probably equally suspect.
(See subject.) (via frankie's journal)
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I don't know, but if it can enlarge my penis, it must be fairly arousing!
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
Now, in all fairness, that's not to say that Nader would do such a thing. Any candidate could be doing that to any random candidates - just treat the names as variables and there you go.
This sig no verb.
I hate you, I hate you SO much.... whatever your asking this question with a plan to do, I hate you and hope you explode in a shower of guts and gut juice.
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
What a strange example to use in your premise!
You think SPAM is going to have an effect on this election? SPAM!? You must be living in a different America my friend, because you can send Men In Black to beat me with rubber hoses while writing "Kerry Killed Your Cat HA HA!" in blood on my wall and I will still drag myself on broken arms to the polls to cast my vote against Bush on election day.
So no, we're well $#%@ beyond spam making a difference at this point...
The whole campaign is so ugly that aggressive spamming wouldn't seem like a really serious annoyance to me. I'm more worried about the lies and character assasination.
Great, another Michael Moore. "How can I trick people into voting my way?"
A mailbox full of V1@gra spam doesn't make me hate Pfizer. I think Michael Moore is an obnoxious liar, but his propaganda tactics aren't going to get me to change my mind and vote for Bush in protest.
I'm so sick of the emotion-laden nonsense from both sides, when there are genuine, thoughtful, interesting, and useful arguments to be made that might allow for creative solutions. Instead, though, people like this questioner seem to feel that deceit is a better approach for dealing with significant issues.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
First of all I don't actual even see but maybe 1-2% of the spam I receive.
Second, I *do* get tons of lefty spam. I even ended up on one of Michael Moore's mailing lists for some unknown reason.
And I have friends and even *clients* sending me anti-Bush stuff.
I hate all the lies and propaganda and crap, especially from that fat fuck (Moore). But I'm still voting for Kerry, almost entirely because I believe Bush made a mistake with the war and should be booted out.
So I guess if a person has their mind made up, the spam won't change it, either way.
Christ, with the 24-hour "newsertainment" channels, I'm amazed there are still undecided people in the country. It seems like everybody is forced to take sides. Everybody is constantly hearing the same BS and talking points repeated over and over and over. Everything has exactly two sides, and hardly anybody has any opinions from the other side, and there's no nuance, no middle ground, no informed opinions.
Do I need to mention that yes, the political system has become a joke due to the press reducing everything to an episode of Crossfire? Not exactly the answer to your question but just the general decay of our society I guess.
I hate spam so much that I would take action against spammers of any sort.
I max out my spam filtering and block a lot of common spam tricks outright.
I do waste a fair amount of time blocking spam and checking that nothing was accidentally blocked. Although I think it is time well spent because I am blocking it from other people too.
If I knew how to track down the spam that did get through, then I would be waging war on those people for sure. They piss me off. I hate it.
If I got spammed to vote Bush, or Kerry I would not give a rats ass because I am not American and it doesn't matter what I think because I can't vote for either of them. I do have an opionion and I hope others have the same opionion but I don't think that vote spam would do anything at all.
Well, sort of one word. I never did, nor will I ever, purchase an X-10 camera due to the popups that seemingly started the popup/popunder craze.
The sad days where I still ran Windows/IE unprotected. Man did I learn how to remove a lot of different spyware/adware.
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
"How often do you make the decision to NOT buy something form a company because you know they engage in spamming activities?"
It's irrelevant.
I get 100-300 pieces of spam daily. For all but 5-10 pieces, all I ever see is the sender and the subject line, not the body.
Even if there's a recognizable brand-name in the subject line, the spam's usually from a sender who's NOT associated with the brand-name (e.g., Viagra).
In the few cases where the sender+subject plausibly *seems* like it might be from the legitimate brand, I never confirm it by opening the mail, for fear of whatever security vulnerability it might contain.
So I virtually never know that the brand-owner should be blamed for the spam.
Spam King Bill Jones is running for U.S. Senate from California. He doesn't have a chance, but to make sure his spam activities receive broad daylight, please link to my website http://billjonessucks.com/ until this November 2nd. Thanks. We now return you to your regular programming. . .
For me, tv commercials already have such effect. For 90% of the junk there is, i remember it as NOT to buy.
:)
If the majority of population would do the same, the world would be a better place
How often have I changed my buying habits because of spam? Either way? Never. I can't remember ever receiving spam from I company I'd heard of.
On the other hand, sending out loads of spam with the subject "I always knew I'd be able to vote Kerry online. sasquatch" would probably just target the same bottom feeders who buy viagra online in response to spam.
"For me, tv commercials already have such effect. For 90% of the junk there is, i remember it as NOT to buy."
Fill in the blanks.
1. "hey, BILLY MAYS HERE, TO TELL YOU ABOUT... "
2. "oh no, lost ANOTHER loan to..."
3. "Itchy feet? ssssssssssssweaty feet? SMELLY FEET? "
4. "eatin' gooooooooooood, in the neigh-bor-hood!"
5. "da-da-da-da daaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, I'm lovin' it"
6. "can they REALLY live with their heads cut off?"
If political parties send out _real_ unsolicited spam, I would freak out.
If someone just sent unauthorized krap, then I would just delete it like everything else.
My father is a blogger.
in Finland during our last municipal elections. A huge number of people at my university (Helsinki University of Technology) got election spam to vote for a student here. It raised quite a heated discussion in some news groups - especially because the message was in Swedish. The reason is that because it's the second official language Finnish-speakers are forced to learn some in school and many don't like doing it because of a 6 % minority (instead of spending the same amount of time learning a more globally usable language) - even though Linus belongs to that minority :) (and consequently had to learn Finnish). In this case many were wondering who really sent it because it wasn't sent from his university account - the student himself, a "helpful" friend of his, or another candidate? I myself got convinced that it was the idiot himself because I found out that during the previous elections he had gotten somebody to put up an ad for him on the university home page.
I have the same resolve - but i do descriminate.
KIA is a prime example. I will not buy a KIA. is it because they're put-put cars? no. is it because they're made of plastic? no. is it because i have something against KIA? no.
it's because of all those damned corny commercials on the radio and television.
When KIA first came on the scene, they advertised dependable cars by showing a fellow with his back seat full of coffee cups. that was cool. i remember thinking, "oh. neat. maybe i'll consider buying one of those in a few months. i'm about due for a new car."
then.. a few months later.. suddenly their entire marketing campaign changed. now you have phoney celebrities, stupid hillbilly music, tons of little stupid sound effects, and there's one of these offenses in every commercial break on the radio and tv both. after such an enslaught, i firmly refuse to even remotely consider buying one of these little cars.
there are other examples of this... but just as there are negative marketing campaigns that firmly set me against the products shown, there are also a few highly positive ones - and i think the negative ones make the positive ones moreso. Those insane Quiznos commercials kick ass. Now i eat Quiznos. good food, with a good marketing strategy - honestly, i go there sometimes just because i support the decisions they're making in their use of the advertising media available, and want to see companies like theirs succeed.
in any event - i personally wouldn't vote for or against a political party based purely on whether or not i get spam about them. tho if it legitimately came from their party, i would take it into consideration.
In Soviet Redmond, software programs you!
no message here
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The e-mail address was only given out once to a single entity.
This tactic reminds me of a local election a few years back. The incumbent sent some people around with signs and stickers for the opponent, generally trying to be rude and force the materials on them. The local news even ran a couple of stories about how the contender was trying to force people to put campaign signs in stores, front lawns, etc. The incumbent was doing really well because of this false-negative publicity for his contender. Then a couple of days before the election someone finally figured out what was really going on. The contender one in a land slide victory on the public backlash.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
How often do you make the decision to NOT buy something form a company because you know they engage in spamming activities?
...
As far as I can tell, I haven't received spam from any "real-life" companies I knew before. Therefore, spam had no influence at all on my buying decisions. Of course I won't buy from mass-mailing companies, but then I never intended to up to now.
Can someone tell me: which well-known companies have engaged in spamming activities? Except for Microsoft, of course, which strangely failed to pay me for forwarding their mail
Very. Take a woman out to dinner, offer her spam, and just see how far you get.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I can tell you that nobody at my place of work will ever bet troubled by election spam. Or any other for that matter.
As of last week our core group no longer uses email. We agreed, as a group, that email is not productive as compared to a combination of paper memos, phone calls, faxes and runners. The amount of spam that we had to sift through and the money and effort to fight it wasn't worth the trouble.
Sure, we could have spent some more and tried to filter it better. But our focus is supposed to be on other things (emergency management, law enforcement, etc.) and not fighting spam.
So I guess the spammers win.
Or did they? They just lot a small part of their audience. Not that they'll notice. But I wonder how many others will give up on it like we've done.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
The best part? I'm not even American and was getting his spam.
yes but 0.001% will that outweigh the numbers that are pissed off by the spam? That is the question here?
Since spam marketing only measures success by the numbers that do buy their product - not the numbers who say "no way". And a vote against a candidate will mean more than a non-purchase of viagra.
Perhaps spam for Nadar (or some other independent) could thow the required spanner in the works.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Well, I get this one regular spam entitled "REAL NEWS", which is some sort of weekly roundup of american events viewed from a far right wing point of view.
I'm still not sure though if the agenda is indeed political (one way or the other) or rather to shock you enough that you'd end up replying to it, hence validating your email address so that you can get some viagra spam next.
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
The vote is never thrown away. Think about it, if the Libertarians (or insert whatever variable third-party you want here) get 15% of the vote, they lose right?
While most people would say "those voters threw away their vote" most people would also be wrong. Because the two major parties would take notice and say "Hey, that was a closer election that we thought, those libertarians got 15% of the vote, maybe next time we need to lean a little more toward their views to help win more support from them. This has happened in the past with the socialist party in America, and could happen in the future with any of the the third-parties.
Just food for thought.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society - M. Twain