Study Finds Value in Email Spam

Ant writes "According to a LiveScience story, a steady diet of email spam can be good for you. From the article: 'Researchers split a group of more than 2,100 Canadians into two groups. One group got e-mails that promoted healthy lifestyles, the other got none. "These were informative and motivational messages sent weekly for 12 weeks," explained study leader Ron Plotnikoff of the University of Alberta. The e-mails promoted the benefits of a good diet and physical activity. Those who were effectively spammed, as a group, saw their mean body mass index (BMI) go down, meaning it improved. BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. Overall BMI rose for the control group, which did not get the emails.'"

Comments

"smapped"?

[iostream_dot_h]

Is "smapping" an activity that my mother would approve of?

So obvious!

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what else is good?

If you have a fat wife or fat children, you should tell them they're fat several times a day. And tell them they need to lose weight. And do it in front of company when people visit. And when they're at the dinner table, tell them they don't need seconds when they reach for something, because they're fat.

And tell your daughter she's ugly, so she'll do something about her face and maybe get some cosmetic surgery. And tell your son how stupid he is every chance you get so he'll be compelled to be an educated man.

And really, nothing gets a man to be a better husband and father than constantly reminding him what a pathetic, weak, insecure human being he is. Make sure you point out how he doesn't provide for the family the way some men do and that he has a long way to go before he could ever impress you or the children. Also, if you're an in-law, do this often to your son or daughter in-law. They will thank you for it someday, for making them a better human being.

And it's proven that little girls who play with (perfect bodied) barbies have much better self-images and are much healthier than other girls. And the images on magazines, MTV, movies and television only help to positively reinforce this good self-image throughout a young girl's growth.

This also works if you're a manager or employer. Make sure to set aside some time each day to ridicule your employees and point out their failures so that they'll do better. Tell them how lazy, stupid, non-productive and wasteful they are.

There is nothing more helpful and nothing people are more grateful for than having the obvious pointed out and being constantly reminded for it. And if you look at people today, the most successful and well-rounded and happy adults are always the ones that were told what ugly, fat, stupid, lazy failures they are their entire childhood.

Too bad this doesn't work for the penis extension thing.

Oh - and by the way, the study says "These were informative and motivational messages sent weekly for 12 weeks". How is that spam?

Re:So obvious!

[tciny]

So does this mean that I'm getting all this viagra spam for a reason? Is sombebody trying to motivate me to get better in bed?

Bullshit

[Lord Apathy]

Bullshit. Send them a never ending supply of porn and penis enlargement spam and see how many of them are still alive at the end of the study.

Ahhh

[SirSlud]

I get it, we just need spammers who encourage us to live healthy lifestyles:

G_t outside now! Exercise! Stop using y0ur com_uter!

and shakespear donged a dozen fractal
nevermind is the people to much building
for Jill never news to many home funding

http://wexxx.shasz13.com/fsss/sm11/epl.cgi

Given that the very purpose of spam is often to sell products that are essentially empty promises, I'm going to write this study off as moot.

That's not spam at all

[Scrameustache]

That's an opt-in mailing list.
Are we gonna start calling every computer glitch a virus now, too?

Also, I bet that if the emails had been advertising actual spam, their bodies would have gotten fatter... and saltier.

All this 'proves'....

[B747SP]

... is that academics will stoop at nothing in the quest for avoidance of actual work. I work with them day in, day out, and believe you me, I've never seen any group of people work so hard at doing nothing.

They obtain large government grants on the strength of elaborate proposals that, when passed through a suitably calibrated crap filter, say nothing, then spend the money buying iPods for their kids, and laptops and broadband for their favourite researcher's kid sister. Once the money is gone, they come up with a paper that says "When two houseflies crawl up a wall, it makes no difference to the average vertical speed of either housefly whether his counterpart is standing on his left or his right.", get published in a journal, get a free trip to speak at a conference somewhere, then they go back to square one and start writing up an application for another grant.

[sarcasm] I can't wait until I've finished my doctorate so I can hop on this gravy train [/sarcasm]

#disclaimer.not: All examples of corruption in this post are real.

Re:Spam + Solicitation != Spam

[squarefish]

it's not spam, that's just a typo in the description- see, later in the brief it says 'smapped'. it's smap they're getting, not spam.

someone needs to smap the editors upside the head...

Yeah, and

[Council]

Getting punched every morning helps with your constitution. Toughens you up. Let's encourage it.

At least, I think it helps. I'll do some studies.

Pressing "Delete" burns fat!

[erroneus]

As it turns out, a re-examination of the study reveals that the subjects burned on avarage of 2,000 calories a day by pressing "delete" on all of these messages. In addition to the extra exercise, they were also consuming more time away from food since they were spending all of this time deleting emails. Finally, many subject becames so frustrated with their email that they took up other hobbies and found themselves actually going outside seeking something to do.