Is a lot of spam our own damn faults?

I got an unsolicited sales inquiry from a major company the other day.  Each day, 10 to 20 junk emails make it through our spam filter.  Usually, I can delete them after only a second or two, but this one sounded like I might already have a business relationship with them.  I don't want to risk insulting a customer or vendor, so I responded, asking what it was about.  The salesman was honest; he said that he thought somebody with my title would be interested.  I wasn't.  Not even close.

I've been on the Internet since it became easy to get on it.  When did it become acceptable to send blind solicitations?  When did the word "spam" come to mean only Nigerian princes and phishing schemes?  It used to be only desperate, border-line ethical, fly-by-night companies that sent junk email.  Now it's Box, Oracle, Microsoft, hell, I'm pretty sure my own employer does it!  Why have mainstream companies sunk so low as to send solicitations based on title?

Think back (if you're old enough) 20 years.  There were trade magazines that you could get "for free".  All you had to do is fill out a sheet that indicated in fair detail what your interests were, what industry you worked in, and the kinds of products over which you have purchase influence.  Vendors got very precisely-targeted lists, and we all knew that we would be getting solicitations.  We valued the magazine, so we didn't resent the ads.  Heck, although I don't remember specifically, I suspect I responded positively to one or two solicitations; the advertiser got their money's worth and I got a product that I wanted.

Those magazines don't exist any more, or at least not in my field.  We've all stopped reading the paper versions and instead look to the web for the information we're interested in.  We subscribe to blogs,  podcasts, slash-dot, LinkedIn groups, and any number of other curated content providers.  But the Internet evolved from an early non-commercial birth.  Early adopters resented the commercialization of the Internet, and refused to give information about themselves.  We create throw-away email addresses to subscribe.  We want to remain anonymous.  So the information curators never established the model of "you tell me about yourself for marketing purposes, and I'll give you information you want."  Some companies tried to get that going, but the internet "culture" prevented it from catching on.

So guess what?  I and my fellow-junk-email-haters are suffering from the unintended consequences of our own behavior.  Vendors no longer have precisely-targeted lists available to them.  So they substitute quantity for quality; send a million emails, and you're sure to find some prospects.  It's the new normal.

Idealists like me want a total paradigm change.  We want unsolicited advertisements to go away completely.  Back in the day, if I knew I wanted a C compiler, what did I do?  Open the yellow pages?  Sorry, no entries in the Yellow Pages for C compilers.  No, I *depended* on those trade magazines' advertisers to give me access to vendors of C compilers.  But now that search engines exist, we can do away with outgoing advertisements.  Instead of push marketing, go with pull marketing.  If I want a C compiler, I won't open my "junk" folder to find an unsolicited ad, I'll do a web search.  And this model *does* work!  We put some useful information on our web site, and attracted more than one customer who came for that information and stayed for our product.

And yet, the realist in me knows that human nature is what it is.  Research has proven again and again that advertising works.  I suspect modern email campaigns generate a lot of "unsubscribe me" responses, some of which may be less than polite, but I also suspect that they generate at least some interest.  Cast a wide-enough net and you'll catch some fish.

So if I have an emotional response to junk mail that is out of proportion to it's actual cost to me, that's my problem, not the advertisers.  I guess I need to get over it.