Get Rich Quick Spam

I got my first text message spam the other day.

Thanks for approving that loan and everything, but I didn't really ask you to. And, P.S., I do not love you, Mike. Never have, never will.  (Naturally, when I called the number just to see what the name of this jerk-of-a-company was, there was no answer.)

I hope I don't get too many more of these, because the text messages will cost me money. Talk about thanks but no thanks.

At least e-mail spams are free to the send-ee.

Which leads me to a recent e-mail spam scam that I just got, letting me know that I can "make money with just a dollar."

This is, of course, a chain letter of the sorts that circulated when I was a kid and which, we were told, were mortally sinful to participate in. Well, maybe not mortally sinful, but sinfully stupid - if you thought you were going to get anything out of it. The ones I got as a kid, however, did not typically involve money - they just involved "passing the chain on" or suffering some dire consequence or ill luck. I never passed any of them on. Cursed by my name, I was a chain-breaker then and I am now.

What I'm passing on these days is the chance to make "almost $100,000 dollars in a month," by sending a buck to the five names on my list, taking number one off, and adding my name to the bottom.

So, apologies to "R Fields of Val Paraiso IN" and "D Fields of Mulga AL." Any relation? I'm sure they are.  My apologies, too, to the Passmores - C & D - of Bessemer, Alabama. I wonder if Bessemer is anywhere near Mulga. I'll have to check my map.

No, none of you will be making a dime off of my largesse, let alone a dollar.

Unlike the sender, you will not make "enough to pay for college instead of dancing."

I will not be quickly compiling "a mailing list and then selling it to a company for their mailing list. (When you receive you dollar add that name and address to your mailing list and once you get about 100 names, you can search for companies willing to buy them."

Well, as a marketer, I have sure purchased some mailing lists that didn't turn out to be worth a damn.

But is there a marketer on the face of the earth that is so brain-dead that they'll purchase a 100 names begotten by a chain letter?