I'm not talking about the DNC spamming me, but I wonder why there aren't more fringe groups filling inboxes.
I am curious as to why these groups are not filling our inboxes.
4 years ago, I used to spam about 100,000 people on a regular basis with radical political messages. The trick is, to them, it wasn't spam, although by today's definitions it would be. I used to get email from people on a regular basis that would say something to the effect of: "I don't know how you got my email address, but I'm glad you did! Thank you!" Others would tell me that the emails I sent were the *only* ones they would let through automatically, and the rest, even emails from family and friends, would be processed by a spam filter. Now obviously, what I was doing wasn't fringe in the sense of being crazy, because I was trying to reach enlightened people who I already knew were desperate for this type of information. I knew who my audience was and I knew how to find them, even if they didn't know I existed. I didn't need to ask their permission, I simply had to make my presence known and they were grateful that someone had rescued them from the inanity of standard cyber discourse. Now, to address your question specifically, the answer is quite simple, those who are the most on the fringe and the most divorced from enlightenment reasoning have the least interest in saying anything to anyone other than those who are already a part of their incestuous ideological circle. Their methods of recruitment are not the tactics of mass struggle, in the way that activists throughout history have used them, but rather, they are more akin to cults, and the tried and true method for cults is to pick people off one at a time, looking for those who are drifting aimlessly in life and needing something to grab on to. More importantly, I think the idea that fringe groups don't care what people think about them is fallacious. While they may not care about public image in the sphincter-obstructing way that professional politicians do, they have no interest in making themselves targets of the wrath of a large swath of the public or the government, which is what most certainly would happen if people started to find, for example, Neo-Nazi messages in their mailboxes on a regular basis. Brutish commerce about penis enlargement pills and other products is tolerated because it is somewhat comical and farcical, but the FBI, ATF, DEA, and other acronyms would start busting down literal and virtual doors if "Kill All Jews" spam was flooding the net. Even nutjobs aren't completely stupid. Jehovah's Witnesses, who on the surface have been stereotyped as trying to recruit people "willy nilly," are not that interested in bringing a flood of random people into their church. They have stuck to old-style face-to-face contact, which is much more similar to grassroots organizing than many would want to admit. Also, being that they are Christians, I suspect that their ethical values would discourage them from spamming. They might be considered annoying to many people, but that doesn't mean that they'll do anything for attention. Then there is the issue of economics and technical know-how. Spamming of the type that you see on the net regularly does require a certain amount of continuous capital investment, which for political groups is not recouped by sales to stupid people. Every dollar they spend on lawsuits, servers, staff, etc., would be money out of their normal operating costs. In addition, the technical information and industry contacts necessary to spam and not get almost completely and permanently blocklisted from the net, including your legitimate non-spam access, is not something that is currently in reach of many of these groups. Even the Neo-Nazis have regular web sites like StormFront.org, and you can bet that their site would be affected if spam started going out that had any connection to them. So, the return on investment for spam is not even worth it for these fringe groups. To summarize, spam is basically counterproductive for political groups unless they have a known audience which can be unearthed with absolute certainty. This requires a depth of cultural understanding and communications skills which few of these groups have. I could do it because it is one of my strengths, but few of the truly fringe groups have the people or resources to play on this field. Art McGee Principal Consultant Virtual Identity Communications+Media+Technology 1-510-967-9381 artmcgee@cyberspace.org