Just recently, every Radford student and faculty member received junk-mail from a clever but highly iritating person. He wrote to all students by manipulating what he knew of RU's "alias" system (this method has since been removed).

Allow me to tell you the effect of what he did. In one single junk-mail, this fella spammed RU. Now, until that point, spamming of that nature had not even been an issue, (or if it had, it was of no concern). Once it happened, however, some members of the RU community entered into the eternal circle of spam.

How does it work? Easy. Let's suppose the fella who started this whole mess is named Bob. Now, when Bob writes to everyone on campus, and Sharon replies telling Bob to shut the hell up, she does not just reply to Bob, she replies to everyone on campus. Then, let's say Joe is ticked off at what is now his second unwanted mail. Joe replies to Sharon telling her that he does not want her spam. Once again, everyone on campus receives spam, this time from Joe. See how this is working? The students of RU now have spam, not just from the intentional spammers, but spam from people telling Bob not to spam. It is an endless cycle. There had to be some sort of intervention, and fortunately there was.

RU E-mail guru Ed Oakes added to the spam, only for a brief moment, politically and very diplomatically telling the spammers that there was a newsgroup designed for advertisement purposes, and that e-mail was not the place for that. I personally thought the spamming would go on for days afterwards, but it did not. Ed Oakes saved the day...for now.

The future for sex-mail, spam, and other assorted forms of junk E-mail is potent. It has always been my philosophy that idiots breed like rabbits. I believe that junk E-mail will too. Prostitutes and pimps have been around since the biblical times, and I can't imagine them all becoming less-annoying than they are now. "Get rich quick" schemes are still followed by the ignorant. It is a shame, but it is real. People just don't know any better. If they did, you can be sure Dionne Warwick wouldn't have a job.

My view of Internet spamming for the future is simple. There is no future. What is now will be forever. Spam is Spam, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Basically I can do nothing but "bend over and take it up the tailpipe" as Jim Carrey so eloquently stated in Liar Liar.

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