If you’re in marketing you should probably know this already.

Dear spammers:

Swear to God..This is what I see when you send me your form-letter dear-blogger spam:

You are wasting both of our time.

Also? Unsolicited advice and plugs for your own shit is not a “free gift” to me.  It’s just annoying.  Stop it or I will cut you.  Please don’t call the cops.  This unsolicited, yet violent advice is my free gift to you.  I hope you can appreciate the irony.

Hugs,

Jenny

PS.  Is it wasting “both of our time” or “both of our times“?  Because they both sound wrong now.  Fuck.  Now I’m even madder.  LOOK WHAT YOU DID.

PPS.  This is the second post I’ve written today but both of them are kind of half-assed so I think together they count as one good post.  Or one quarter of a good post.  Am I supposed to multiply them or add them?  I don’t know how fractions work in regards to blogging.

85 thoughts on “If you’re in marketing you should probably know this already.

Read comments below or add one.

  1. Spam is evil & I’m not talking the kind in a can. I’m not sure how I feel about that Spam, I’ve never actually had it to so I feel I cannot form an opinion. BUT the spam I find in my email box that kind causes violent tendencies in me too.

    And I think you get to multiply the posts, at least that’s what I tell myself.

  2. Why are you feeling you should not actually cut the spammers? I think this is a legitimate reaction to them. I believe there is no jury ANYWHERE that would convict you for such an action.

  3. Just turn it around and say the bastards are wasting “both your time and more importantly, mine” because it’s easier. Maybe at a “bitch” after “mine” for emphasis.

  4. How about boths of our time? It’s not right, but at least you *know* it’s not right, so you don’t have to think about it any further.

  5. I would get myself so worked up that I would avoid that sentence all together. “You are wasting my time and yours.”

  6. I think that as the Bloggess, it is up to you and you alone to create the rules of fractions as they apply to blogs and share them with the rest of us! 🙂 I’ll be waiting for our Fractions for Bloggers Math Lesson from the one and only Bloggess!

  7. Bigger, longer make her scram with pleesure get begger cock!

    Spam has become an art form. I love reading Spam titles. In my Spam folder. Maybe you should release a book. Or I should. Titled “Spam: Titles that make you scram for begger meat.”

  8. How about just, “you should be wasted”. And while we’re at this grammatical fork in the road, could we talk Craigslist ads for a second?

    People-let’s put an end to “loosing weight” and “You’re dream couch” or “Conch” (I live in Florida; I fear there must have been a 2nd grade beach side field trip debacle to the Havertys by the Sea)

    Also, stay away from the guy selling the “slay bed”. {shiver}

    and the venerable lamp shade. Although, that would be great at parties.

    xoxoxo (my image removed for my protection)

  9. God I hate getting spam emails. They just keep coming. I need to stop entering my email address into suspiscious looking websites.

  10. I am pretty sure it is “both of our time”. You only have one time each. I think time is also one of those nouns that is singular no matter what. Like “sheep” or “antelope”.

  11. What is being wasted? Time.

    Whose time is being wasted? Ours. Yes, both of ours, but it’s the “our” that does the work.

    Our time. Dear spammers, you are wasting our time. “Both our time” is correct, but the “both”, while valuably indicating that the “our” is not you and your friend, reading the spam together, but includes you and your interlocutor, is also a little confusing. Ignore it.

    I actually don’t know the answer. But the above is how I’m going to get through my dissertation without, hopefully, anyone realizing I don’t know what I’m talking about.

  12. HAhaha… summed up oh so nicely! I’m surprised that the University of Phoenix or some other diploma mill doesn’t offer degrees in Spam Comprehension. Most of that cluttered shit is unreadable anyway.

  13. I think if you’re going to get spam it should at least come with free porn. Or tentacle sex. Otherwise, what’s the point?

  14. Wouldn’t this be so much cooler if they made a piece of software that replaced all the blocked images with pictures of actual Spam?… Just sayin’.

    And yeah, I’d go with “both your time and mine”. 🙂 English degrees is gud sometimes.

  15. I just wasted both of our time/times trying to figure that out.

    Touche, Jenny.

    Also, just imagine that ‘e’ in ‘touche’ has a little thingy over it. You know, ‘accent’ I think they are called? For some ‘reason’ my keyboard doesn’t ‘like’ those.

    #OveruseOfInvertedCommas #MyWorkHereIsDone

  16. Tell them you have hooks for hands and if they could only buy your macrame squids, you’ll be able to support your ailing distant relative–an African prince in dire need of spare change and viagra.

  17. I think it’s “both of our time” or maybe “Both our time”. And you cross-multiply. Don’t forget to carry the one.

  18. Great blog. I think the most correct would be “wasting your time and mine.”

  19. Who gives a shit about Spammers time? Just stick with it is a waste of MY time and be done with it.

    I gave up on gmail because the spam was killing me; although I am always intrigued as to how viagra, washing machines, cholesterol-lowering drugs and vicodin go together. Sounds like a cocktail someone should invent.. we could call it The Bloggess (or, for those teetotallers who abstain from Viagra, The Penisless Bloggess.)

  20. I would go with “both of our time” since time is pretty much plural all the time But I certainly wouldn’t take my side if it was a grammatical battle to the death.

  21. Both our time and both our times sounds horrible. Just change it all together please. Either your readers are really bad with grammar or you gave us the hardest question possible? Still heart you. And oh how I hate those “I am Mangu from Africa and I want deposit $80,000,000 into your bank account. Please contact”

  22. I vote for not giving a shit about their time at all and just complaining about how it wastes YOUR time. Then you don’t have to give a crap about the grammar part of it and you can focus on the other stuff, like the part where you threaten to cut them. I like that part. I don’t even get good spam. I get the usual bullshit although a lot of it seems to be coming from Russia with all kinds of characters that I can’t even tell what the hell they’re selling. Probably the same shit except just in Russian.

  23. @sono but if time is plural as well as singular then what happens to all the good times?

    My favorite recent comment spam was sent to a new blog that still had the wordpress “hello world” placeholder post as the only post. The spam gushed on and on about how great the writing was and deep the thinking was.

    It may not be as fun as ruling Germany, but I think TheBloggess would be a great Queen of Blog Fractions.

  24. It should be “wasting your time and mine”. The word “both” is extraneous and redundant. However, my use of both of those words is neither because redundant means repetitive and extraneous means unnecessary, so what I am saying is that the use of the word “both” is unnecessary and repetitive, however now I’m thinking that (ironically) maybe my use of “extraneous and redundant” is also extraneous and redundant. In any case don’t use the word “both”, OK? It’s just wrong. OK?

  25. Actually I think having to half assed post would make one full ass. You may have a donkey on your hands now.

  26. It has just occurred to me that maybe my advice is suspect at this time because I’ve been drinking (it is labor day after all). OTOH I think I am always more brilliant when I’ve been drinking. Or should I say that when I’ve been drinking, I always think I am more brilliant than when I have not?

  27. I think it is a mistake to think of spammers as people who are writing these emails out. Even as if they are copying and pasting this out to a vast amount of people. More than likely there is an autoemailler computer program that is blasting these things out by the hour. The programmer who wrote the program is long gone from the scenario and the person who is running the program pushes a button and just lets it run. There isn’t much time on their end getting wasted at all.

  28. Hi Jenny, I have an idea to get these bastards back. CRASH THEIR SERVER. With your awesome pull in the world of blog you could organize for thousands of us to visit the website, of whoever it is that is supposed to benefit from this spam, at a given time each day for a week. You could even use twitter to go viral with the attack and totally shut them down for the whole week. Call it zombie server attack. Spam is all fun and games until somebody crashes your server. The host of the site will be forced to block traffic to the offending site to protect its business with its other customers. Also a good lesson for the site host to think about since they are the ones that are best positioned to control spam in the first place. Assholes. With any luck you could start a whole new culture of collective public response to the spam menace. A Bloggess army, if you will. Wow. Now I’m all fired up too.

  29. So, wait… why care about your grammar or spelling or fractions? I mean, half the time they don’t even make sense in their e-mails… or even take the time to read your blog…. ya know what I mean, Mr. Jenny The Bloggess?

  30. Thanks to all the spam I get, I am now worth billions of dollars. Or soon will be – as soon as all those nice widows, secretaries, and other concerned citizens finish putting my share of the ill-gotten gains of their dead relatives in my bank account. So don’t cut them. Just the rest of the bastards who haven’t written me into their will yet.

  31. @Craig – I think the term for that is Bloggessed, as in, “to hit the server so hard that it literally melts.” That is a measure of the awesomeness of our Bloggess, that she can direct a global DDoS via a single Tweet.

    Sounds like a perfect punishment for the spammers, but what if the server is in China? That would mean cyberwar, and we don’t need the Chinese sticking any more USB sticks in our military’s PC ports.

    ~EdT.

  32. Huh. No one ever wants to give me free gifts, even with strings attached. Butt loads of money? Check. Sex pills? Check. Free gifts? NOT IMPORTANT ENOUGH I GUESS.

    Stupid spammers.

  33. ugh i hate spam email. it makes me stabby. i like when they tell me that a dear loved one has died in the uk, and i need to wire money to someone in africa, because of course that makes sense, and they’ll send me all the millions of pounds that the loved one in the uk that died left me.

    which is funny, because closest my family comes to england is NEW england, or more specifically new york.

  34. I go with just ‘my time’ who gives a fuck about their time? they are obviously wasting (their time) emailing crap to everyone. Pray to the spam god that his (I can’t imagine woman spamming- with all the cooking and cleaning to be done) computer blows up spontaneously.

  35. I, too, am irritated by all the spam I get on my blog. But without them I wouldn’t have the number of “visitors” “reading” my posts. So then I try to enjoy these morons’ copy and pasted, misspelled dribble. Thanks for wasting my time…and oh, yeah, thanks for visiting.

  36. I think you have to invert and multiply. Which would equal 1 (one). So I’m pretty sure you’re all squared away.

  37. That’s a horribly awkward sentence Jenny. 🙁 but it would be “Wasting both of our time.”
    Sadly though, because I’m tired, I can’t give you an alternative sentence.
    *sadface

  38. It would be wasting the time of you, as well as the time of the shit marketer spam-bot. I think that means that time would be singular, making it “wasting both our time.” However, you could consider your time separate from the time of the president of lame email attempts, and that would mean that both your time and theirs is being wasted, creating two times making it plural.

    What I’m saying, apparently, is that I’m no help in this matter. But, you know, good luck with that. Sorry to have wasted all time(s) involved.

    Oooh, there you go. Just use the handy parenthesis-s. It says, “I may not know the proper way to say this, but damn it, I’m sure as fuck going to cover all my bases.” Plus, the majority of people will see it and just assume that you’re correct, because that’s what people do. God, I’m awesome (see? screw that ass-out-of-“u”-and-“me” shit).

    Problem(s) solved. You’re welcome.

  39. Uh… How many images were in the email? That’s mental, and pointless and a waste of your times and my times and everybody else’s timess’.

    Most of my followers on twitter are spam bots – and even they get bored and unfollow me.

    It’s like someone posting junk mail through the letterbox, then knocking on the door and asking for it back.

  40. Jenny, I think I can help answer your math question. (Not to brag or anything, but in grade four I won the coveted “Paddington Bear-y Good At Math” award and I was also a safety patrol.)

    Okay, so assuming that x= post #1 and y= post #2:

    x + y – (1 + number of “Why the fuck do you bother spamming me?” images removed for security reasons ) / (1 + number of people who think “painting a snake on his mini-refrigerator” should be added to the Urban Dictionary anyway) + (1 kickass new computerless computer desk and furniture I would totally cut a bitch for) = 1.21 excellent posts.

    Yep, looks like you’re safe.

  41. In the whole time/space continuum, I truly believe there are more than one “time”. However, in the human experience, I also believe there can only be one time at a time. I think. And now, I will drink some more vodka and crap my pants. You’re welcome.

  42. Grammar and spelling be damned !! Ive made it my personal mission to break every grammar rule out there….one at a time!

  43. Yeah, spam is kind of like the giant walrus of the internet. I’m not exactly sure how, but I’m pretty sure there’s a parallel there somewhere.

  44. Thank God for you. This might be all that gets me through this Tuesday that feels like a Monday, which should be good because it’s a short week, but instead feels like it sucks right now.

  45. this has nothing to do with your post, but you should have some cafepress type shit (or maybe different, better shit) that says “the bloggess” and/or has photos of you doing inappropriate things/nonsensical rambling quotes from you on them. t shirts, mugs, water bottles. that kind of stuff. i would totally buy some of it.

  46. They eat spam sushi in Hawaii. But that’s (although fascinating) is irrelevant. My email address is strictly for my blog, and it’s not even my name. Yet I’m on some Aussie surf shop’s mailing list. Oddly I shopped there 3 years ago. But my email address didn’t exist then. And this is the ONLY spam I get at that address. I’m afraid… (Spam sushi also scares me. A lot)

  47. Good gawd, do you read the comments this far down?

    Every single thing I do on the intarwebs is spammed. It wastes so much time, it chaps my ass.

    BTW, my spelling has been corrected twice in the last 2 weeks. And if it weren’t for the “language suggestion” app in WordPress, I’m sure that people (person) reading it would think I was a 3rd grader. I have no memory for such crap. Now ask me the name of a color…I got that.

  48. I always thought that spammers were trying to get you to open their emails so a virus or worm or something could get to your computer.

  49. i dunno how it the whole time/times thing works ms blogess, but i do know that as a red blooded texan you might want to know that rand paul needs a few bucks for his campaign. we really need him in the senate. i hate to use your blog as a politcal thing because i know you have lots of us with lots of issues but just like you rally us to causes, this one is so important. i hope i can encourage y’all to donate even just 25 bucks to rand paul here. https://www.randpaul2010.com/donate/

    i am not a robot, i am a real reader and commentor on your board and you could help so muc by putting this message through. i hope you will.

  50. Seriously, there is a saying in Chinese (or an idiom? What is the difference anyway??!! You guys are trying so hard to confuse non-English speaking people. Sheesh) ” Sticking your butt out half way to the sky.”

    So I figure that two butts will take you all the way to the moon.

    You are welcome for the free Chinese lesson.

  51. My windshield got smacked out of my sexy ass mini van this weekend when it was molested by a kayak. so if you get any spams or unsolicited emails from auto glass people please send them my way and I will do it quick and dirty under the bleachers with them for a new windshield. thanks.

  52. I need you to write a post in response to a stupid comment I received. I would do it, but I don’t think I’m allowed to say bad words on my blog. In any case, let me know if you can help.

  53. When I started out if I didn’t get spam I didn’t get much email at all.

    Except for jokes. I used to get a lot of “Joke of the Day” email. I miss those. People don’t laugh enough any more.

  54. ROFL LMAO, who are you girl??????????! So freaking funny!!! Loved every bit of what I read, and wish I had your writing skills.. Ha ha ha.. Just what I needed this Friday afternoon!!
    Rachana

  55. Thats OK. I don’t know how fractions work in regard to fractions, so if you’re only lost as relates to blogging, you’re ahead of the curve. 🙂

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