Every day I battle with spam, whether it be in my email inbox or on this site. I read recently that spam (junk email) accounts for 80% of all email traffic in the world. That's disgusting. On my site, probably 80% of all of the comments left for my posts is spam. At least I have a tool to deal with it in a relatively easy fashion.
The (long-winded) question that came to mind yesterday as I cleared 5 comments about some sort of medicine was this: almost all spam, as far as I know, is done these days by so-called "spam-bots." They are programs that search for places to leave spam, whether it be a website comment system or email or whatever. But someone had to write those programs, and someone had to write the spam in the first place, and some company had to enlist the help of spammers to (in theory) get business. Do these jerks realize that the "services" they offer to people are completely useless? Do they realize that nearly all of the internet-using population hates them? Do they go to bed at night thinking "well that was a good day. I pissed off 700,000 people!" I personally want to base my career on doing something useful and gratifying not only for myself but for others. Spam is the antithesis of useful and gratifying.
Knowing that spam is pure garbage, do the people who create it have enough of a soul to recognize that they are scum? One could use the telemarketing line: "Everybody needs a job, even people who call and harrass you." But spam is a little different. It's far more prevalent, usually much more disgusting, and doesn't employ many people at all.
Discuss (or not).