[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Strategic Spam

[James.Ryan@telemedianetworks.com]

I think Ted and Jon have made some good points, but somehow to me neither quite hits the mark.  This "Public Service" spam thing has struck a chord
with the idealistic, activist soul-of-my-forgotten-youth.  Anyway, here's what I think, for what it's worth:

>you have a megaphone. it's got a volume knob. the markings on
>that knob are logarithmic: 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000,
>1000000, 1000000, and so on. they denote how many people will
>hear what you say through it. you have a 'beautiful' or 'valu-
>able' idea. how loud do you turn it up?

Actually, I don't think this is accurate.  The megaphone is not that smoothly adjustable.  From my point of view, it goes 1, 10, 100, 10000000.  Lists
like Nettime are perhaps a 10 or a 100.  Non-commercial issues-oriented websites, depending on their popularity, are anywhere from a 1 to a 100.  Spam
is 10000000.  There's really not much in between.  You're either stuck in a relatively small group of fairly like-minded people, or you're blasting
everyone indiscriminately.
My second point (alluded to above) is the _target_.  With the megaphone analogy, basically as you turn the volume up, more and more people hear you,
but the message is not targeted.  Any passers-by within range can hear it.  That is why I don't think the megaphone analogy works (except for spam).
Websites cannot reach people who are not already interested in a topic and actively searching for information.  Lists tend to gather a small core of
contributors, generally all sharing interests and political leanings.  It's more like you have a megaphone that has one setting, 10000000 (spam), a
bulletin board with millions of messages on it buried under layers of advertisements (websites), and a bunch of highly-focused magazines (lists).  I
realize that these metaphors suck, by the way...

>The best way around this is to establish networks or communities of
>correspondents who agree to share emails.  This is a tactic that online
>activists uses at various times... e.g. the Voters Telecommunication Watch

That's fine if you're just trying to coordinate a group of people who are already interested in and sympathetic to what you have to say.  I suppose I
wasn't clear enough in my first post, but I read the first anonymous post in this thread as a "call to arms" to use spam as a way to subvert the
existing information distribution networks which are controlled by corporations with the asisstance of governments whose only purpose is to keep us
buying tons of shit we don't need and to prevent us from either rioting in the streets or killing each other.  Corporations spend millions to get the
armies of couch potatoes to buy lipstick, beer and cars (and then return docily to their couches), why not use spam to get them off their asses and
back into the streets?

Yes, it is an idealistic idea.  Yes, there is the risk that the messages could be either deriled as "spam" or just plain "lost in the noise."  But
perhaps the potential good outweighs the risks?






                                                                                                                           
                    t byfield                                                                                              
                    <tbyfield@panix.com>         To:     nettime-l@bbs.thing.net                                           
                    Sent by:                     cc:                                                                       
                    nettime-l-request@bbs        Subject:     Re: <nettime> Strategic Spam                                 
                    .thing.net                                                                                             
                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                           
                    2001/02/08 17:37                                                                                       
                    Please respond to t                                                                                    
                    byfield                                                                                                
                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                           



James.Ryan@telemedianetworks.com (Thu 02/08/01 at 04:08 PM +1300):

> Of course, what stops me (and I'm sure everyone else) from actually
> sending out such ideas, no matter how beautiful and valuable they may be,
> is the fear that the act of spamming itself will sully the content and the
> sender, that the militant anti-spammers, many of whom are long-time
> "netizens" with an almost self-righteous sense of ownership over the net,
> will flame them out of existence for the simple ACTION of spamming,
> without even looking at the CONTENT.  I'm sure modesty also plays a
> role--who am I to decide that a particular idea is so wonderful that 20
> million people should get it in their in-boxes unsolicited.

i'm usually leery of analogies for the net and its traffic, but
in this case i'll make an exception.

you have a megaphone. it's got a volume knob. the markings on
that knob are logarithmic: 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000,
1000000, 1000000, and so on. they denote how many people will
hear what you say through it. you have a 'beautiful' or 'valu-
able' idea. how loud do you turn it up?

millions and millions of people all around the world have the
same kind of megaphone. they all have 'beautiful' or 'valuable'
ideas. how loud do they turn it up?

you have a set of headphones. they allow you to suppress this
or that sound on an ad hoc basis that's prone to error in dir-
ect proportion to how systematically you program it. all the
other people have them too.

along with the megaphones and headphone, everyone was issued an
array of acoustic devices that permit very complex ways of fin-
ding people you don't know and communicating with them--indivi-
dually or in groups, synchronously or when they feel like it,
overtly or covertly, and so on.

so the question we should ask ourselves whether it doesn't make
sense to turn the volume knob on the headphones to 10000000. i
mean, after all, anyone who doesn't want to hear our 'beautiful'
or 'valuable' message right now can just cancel it out (along
with lots of other messages, maybe), right?

> However, maybe it is possible that the "knee-jerk" 100% absolute
> anti-spamming attitude of many long-time and prominent "netizens" and

yeah, by not turning it up to 10000000, we're just being knee-
jerk. after all, there are people who have devices capable of
reaching 10000000 people too. and we--all of us--have to com-
pete with them, right? otherwise our 'beautiful' and 'valuable'
ideas will get drowned out in all the noise.

cheers,
t

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