17 March 2010
cyber garbage

Filed under then it happens

So, my web store basically got raped by a spam artist. I started getting all these bounce backs from email addresses that were wrong, and I eventually figured out that someone was using the recommend feature on my store to send spam, which looked like it was coming from MY email address. I was only aware of the ones that didn’t get through- which numbered in the thousands, so I can just imagine how many were actually ending up in people’s inbox.

It made me so mad, and desperate, and embarrassed! People were emailing me back with messages like “this is spam, take me off your list” and I would write back all scrambley and apologetic saying ” Eeeee, I would if I could but I don’t know what’s going on. . . !” What a time suck it was, having to delete all this shit, having to communicate with my web hosts, having to think about something that is so meaningless in the big picture. More than once I was like, I’m just going delete my website. Fuck it.

I’ve now fixed the problem, I think. Only time will tell, when the last few bounce backs have run their course. I had to dig a little deeper into my web stores inner workings. I usually prefer to ignore that coded web hacker type information. Like, I’d rather use the space in my brain to store useful information, like silly songs to sing my daughter, or one of the zillion passwords I am required to know as a human living in 2010. 

It got me thinking about spam, and how ridiculous it is. Why does it exist? Does it ever actually work? Are people that stupid? People that send spam are the same type of people that litter. I hate them. Imagine that every spam email was actually printed on a piece of paper, then thrown on the ground. What would the world look like? We’d be buried alive. Even though the internet is this virtual place, where does all this spam go? What if the virtual world gets so littered with spam, it ends up a useless wasteland? Is that possible? 

Would I even care if the Internet ceased to exist because it became so overrun with spam that it self destructed? Sometimes the internet and my place in it will suddenly make me very, very uncomfortable. It gives me the heebie jeebies. Like, why am I sharing all this information? Am I not just contributing to the cyber garbage heap? Why do I know all this random shit about all these random people all of a sudden, and do I really care? I feel like rebelling against it often, but the boring rebellion to the internet is just not turning on the computer.  I don’t know. If I disappear all of a sudden, you’ll know why.

It’s been way too long since I made something with my hands.

2010-03-17  ::  adrienne