(Note: The following wall of text was written while attempting to regain composure and is as such riddled with delusion, paranoia, epilepsy, unjust, biased claims and onions...Lots. Of. Onions.)
So, yesterday, as it was a bright sunny day and I was as usual walking down the road to go about my own business, making it extra sure not to hurt, bother, distract or disrupt anyone and anything from the tiniest ant on the pavement to the irrationally hostile taxi drivers plaguing the streets, I realized that there is no reason to be grumpy! Hooray! Sunny weather, beautiful day, Sunday too, friend's birthday, so yeah, the mood swiftly brightened up. Because why not? We deserve to laugh and have some fun with our liFe once in a while, if only just to escape the depression that inevitably follows and stays with us every other day... Or at least that's what I thought until I returned home...
Now upon returning, as any other sane person, I realized I forgot to feed the pile of dust in the hall of my home before leaving and now it was aggressively asking me to tend to it immediately because it was starving. By that I obviously mean that cleaning around the house was in order including some very boring and even rough bits but hey, no one is ruining this special day, no no no...
Of course, I know what you are thinking. And I later acknowledged how much of an idiot I was for thinking that I can make that bliss last without even having asked the right questions to my self, like "What can ruin such a day?"...But it was exactly because of that happiness that I failed to see the answer or even the very question that was to be my undoing. To put it simply, I should have considered WHAT can unexpectedly and irreversibly put an end to such happiness, whereas I only considered Who.
At any rate, at least up until this point I was engaging in recreational activities, minding my own business (along with some heavy duty cleaning where I got to show the dust my battle scars and sanitizing prowess in an honorable 1v1 fight to the death) and as usual, just looking forward to the moment I would power the computer back up and enjoy the routine internet surfing (and of course, by that I mean the everyday Armor Games lurking.)
And it was at this very moment that my dreams and hopes of an entire blissful day were shattered violently and instantly. For who could guess what lied in the home page of the community, waiting to be discovered by unsuspecting forumnauts and indulge in the excessive shower of attention it would be given afterwards? Well, I think that the answer is "Everyone but me".
Indeed everyone could guess that...for when it comes to the Armor Games community, there is often only 1 word associated with it in the dark and terrible under City of the kingdom. A word that everyone knows but no one dares to speak aloud. The dreadful "spam"...
The first shock of course shook me up (get it? shook? no?) but it was easily brushed aside by my -for heaven's sake- still naive self who erroneously dared to believe this day to be different for everyone, even for the workaholic and terrible-at-staying-hidden spambots (lol).
So this, in the end, was to be my punishment...Floods of escort ads toying with my unassuming and humble behavior. Tons of Korean threads shouting in complete gibberish their collective mocking of my attempts at remaining positive. Massive walls of incomprehensible text dramatically disrupting my personal inner harmony (which is precisely the way I am paying the spam back with this very wall of text...that'll show them!) and all round inconceivable grammar, syntax, vocabulary even language once again plaguing the website that is my solace...
Well, I am sure most of you modest folk will be thinking of the lesson I have learned. But you are missing the moral of the story. Now admittedly, the fit of rage and the tantrums I threw at that moment have affected, and continue to an extent to affect me and my mindset, BUT there is ABSOLUTELY no. Heavenly. Reason. TO disrupt the communication OF ORDINARY PEOPLE So Violently! And Viciously!
And to do what? To accomplish what, exactly? How does one get ANYTHING from advertising a SITE IN KOREAN? IN A PRIMARILY AMERICAN SITE AND COMMUNITY? WITHOUT. EVEN. A. LINK? Aaaarghhhh...
Why is it pray-tell so IMPORTANT, to fill 5, full, pages with threads IN KOREAN that keep repeating the Same sentence over and over!? How will this message save the world from the oncoming zombie apocalypse exactly? Because that's the only reason I can think of one requiring all that attention to post just that!
Even so, how can anyone think that flooding a site with ONE spambot is not enough to get the message across? How are there still people who let loose MORE spambots in the same site, to flood the community faster? How? And why!?
And suppose that we are talking about the average everyday variant of spam which, despite poor grammar, often irrational syntax and excessive amount of references to the product name, usually still gets the message across, id est what this product is and what it does. So, in this case, my question is, who exactly is going to be drawn to a site advertised by a spambot? SERIOUSLY WHO? Because, for it to be such a big deal for so many years, there must be some people (who are obviously completely nonsensical and utterly insane) who are drawn to such irrationally advertised sites! And you see, this is what I cannot hope to grasp! Marketing research is a huuuge field of economics that studies the preferences of the consumers to improve the techniques of advertising! So many years of research to make successful ads and we still see business owners willing to strap down their own potential customers, clockwork orange-style and force them to read the name of their product until they love it! HOW CAN THEY THINK THAT THIS MARKETING TACTIC WORKS?
And even when dealing with spam that manages to miraculously follow the rules of the English grammar and actually describe flawlessly the product itself, am I crazy to ask WHO thought it was a good idea to post the ad about stupid MUSCLE SUPPLEMENTS IN A FLASH GAMING SITE!?
Even ignoring that, even if we accept that ads are just ads and will only "Advertise" (duh) the content they are supposed to, HOW is advertising often ENTIRELY ILLEGAL CONTENT EVEN A THING? Uuughh...
So many questions that defy logic and all sense. So much of it just feels so wrong... Who on Earth thought spam would be a good idea and most importantly, why are there people who still think it to be such an idea? After so much of everything, including the evolution of the internet, the evolution of Marketing, the growing intolerance of people for ads of any kind, how does spam manage to survive and thrive as a marketing tactic??? When will businessmen around the world understand that setting multiple spambots loose in a flash gaming site to flood that site's inactive community with incomprehensible ads about hair products is NOT (repeat: not) a reliable way to boost their sales and revenue? Is it really that hard to understand in the end? Or do I somehow hail from a different world and just cannot see the logic in this?
