No limits to human greed and obnoxiousness

Forget “evil,” I am upset and angry that there appears no limit to simple human greed and obnoxiousness.

I’ve just deleted about the 20th piece of comment spam (“Nice blog, check out my casino link”) on this blog. Of course, this pales in comparison to the 400+ e-mail spams I receive (150+ I must personally sift through) DAILY. But it irks and saddens me nonetheless.

Sure, I could install a special filter to try to quarantine the spam from the non-spam comments. I could even switch to a different blog software (at the cost of about 20 hours out of my already busy life) that offers more comment options.

And yeah, I could even just turn off my comments, like many others have done. But then this blog becomes purely a lecture and not a conversation, whereas I’m constantly hoping to move it more towards the latter!

So I’m just sick of this, knowing that it’s basically an arms race.

I don’t make much, if any money off of this blog; I do it because I enjoy writing, and I take pleasure in the fact that thousands of folks monthly seem to enjoy reading what I have to say.

But — as other bloggers have frankly expressed — when it becomes more of a hassle than a pleasure, I (and many other bloggers) will simply just throw up our arms and give up. And then the spammers will simply move on to the next medium, I suppose.

I’m hardly a violent person, but I’d so like for one of those creeps to try invading my personal space in real life so I could punch their lights out.

On a more philosophical note, I’m just deeply saddened (and worried) about how spammers seem to be effectively co-opting every revolutionary new communications medium. Already I’ve lost e-mails sent to me by friends because I accidentally trashed them as spam. So many lost opportunities, strained friendships, and so much wasted time that could have been spent in profitable or social pursuits… all because of spammers’ greed and ammorality. I don’t believe in hell, but if I did, I’d be delighted to see all of them having their nether regions being painfully singed in the netherworld.