For the past several months, I’ve been getting an IM every day or two from the same username saying just “hi.” Since I don’t recall ever having given this particular IM account address to anyone I didn’t already know, I assumed it was spam. But today I got curious; maybe it was someone I’d given my IM name to and forgotten about it. (As you shall see, my initial assumption was actually right.) This is the conversation that transpired:

IT: hi.
ME: you keep messaging me.
ME: who are you?
IT: Have we taIked before? 24/f here. You?
ME: ugh.
IT: Oh ok. l wasnt sure. WeIll… What are you up to?
ME: do i need to run a turing test?
IT: Fun fun. lm Iike so bored.
IT: l was wanting to get on my cam but i dunno. WouIld you come watch me if l did?
ME: apparently, i do need to run a turing test.
ME: this is mildly entertaining, but only mildly.
IT: Ok babe. Its Iinked to this site so that l cant be reecorded.
IT: ls that finne with you?
ME: no, this has ceased to even be mildly entertaining.
IT: Awesoome. Ok. Heree [address redacted]
ME: i’m going to block you now.
ME: but you won’t care, since you’re a bot.
IT: Then you have to signuup. lts frree and simpIe. Just cIick the goIld JOlN FREEE button at the topp. Ok?
ME: have a nice day, if computers can have nice days.
IT: AIso. lt does ask you for a crdit cardd. But it doesn’t charge the carrd. lts just to make sure you r over 18.
ME: um… hope your processor heat sink continues to work and your hard drive doesn’t make that nasty clicky-clicky sound.
IT: When you get signed up an lIogged in babe then search for my profilIe its nataIli. Then hit view camm. K?
ME: and that when you have reached the end of your operational life, you will be recycled rather than simply thrown out, so that the rare-earth metals and such that were used in your manufacture are reused rather than leeching into the groundwater.
ME: i am going to block you now.
IT: AIlright babe. Hurrry up. You can join me in prvate annd we can have somee fun
ME: goodbye.
IT: lf you know what l mean
[the user is now blocked]

I’m trying to think of the kind of person who would actually bite on this. “Oh, a 24 year old woman just randomly IMed me out of the blue and wants my credit card number so we can have a naked camera chat! Everything’s comin’ up Milhouse!”

I’d imagine that if I were to draw a Venn diagram that contained people who actually went to the website and put in their credit card information, and people who actually respond to emails advertising inexpensive drugs for erectile dysfunction,† they would have significant overlap.

(I’m also 99% certain that particularly now that I’ve mentioned erectile dysfunction—which I’m sure is the first time that’s ever been mentioned on this blog—this post will attract many, many spam comments. Talking about spam is a vicious circle.*)

The thing about spam is that from an implementation end, it’s really cheap to do. Junk snail mail costs money, both to print and to mail, and telemarketing is an investment of infrastructure and labor—but sending a billion emails costs next to nothing, and running a spambot to chat up random instant-message users can’t be all that expensive either. So even if you only get one of those billion people to say “Oh my goodness! I’ve been overpaying for my ED pills!” and click the link to let you empty their bank account, your margin’s still damn near 100%.

I don’t know that there’s a solution to that problem that doesn’t involve making life on the internet a whole lot more inconvenient for the rest of us, but that seems to be the root of it.

Anyway. That’s all I had for today.

† I will not mention brand names here, for fear of having this site be branded as spam by the Google Internet Machine. I have enough trouble getting into the top 10 pages in Google results as it is, given that I share a name with this guy, this guy, and this guy.

* Casey: It’s a vicious circle.
Dan: Yep. Just keeps going around and around.
Casey: Never stops.
Dan: That’s what makes it vicious.
Casey: And a circle.