AOL SPAM – A First Glimpse at Hypocrisy

Every day, I go through the same routine. I wake up, tumble off of couch (I sleep on the couch), do my thing in the bathroom, let the dog out, go to work, come home, get the mail, throw most of it away, then sit at my computer and work. This is what I have come to expect of the majority of my days. Well, sometimes I start to think, however rare it is, it happens; that’s when I start causing trouble.

When I grab my mail, I primarily get 3 different types: junk mail, bills, and the occasional letter. The first two I can’t stand, unfortunately they make up 99% of the mail I get throughout the year. The first one, junk mail, is not only the most annoying, but it is the most out of control. This is where it gets interesting. Let’s call junk mail SPAM, because that’s what it is. SPAM is email junk mail.

Now, I am willing to bet half of my savings ($8.00) that at one point or another you have received an AOL disk in the mail. I get them usually once a month. Most of the time, in a fit of disgust, I just throw them out, sometimes, I make coasters out of them, less often my friends and I, in a state of inebriation, play Frisbee with them in the living room, and even less often, I look at them. Well, today was one of those less often times.

I am sitting on my couch looking at this thing, and it smacks me right in the face. On the side of this box it advertises “Block Spam and Web Pop-Ups!” Now, in typical big business style, here is the hypocrisy: they are advertising they block spam, but they continue to bombard my mailbox with this crap every month. How are people supposed to trust a company that advertises through spam that it blocks spam?

What is worse, they don’t even take the time to try to address me as who I am. Instead, they call me “CURRENT RESIDENT.” Now if that doesn’t take the true to form inbox spam structure, I don’t know what does. Maybe this: They tell you, once you are done reading (using) this, forward it on to your buddy.

This seems to be a growing trend today in big business. This has got to stop. Not only are they annoying the crap out of me, and lying to me… they are filling our garbage bags with this crap. I now take my trash out more often, which means the landfills crowd faster, pollution, etc.

AOL, here is a quick tip for you. If you are going to advertise that you will block spam, DON’T ADVERTISE THROUGH IT! Also, if you are going to send out these CD’s to everyone’s house, at least use CD-RW’s so we can reuse them instead of throwing them out.