They can't stop spam, but they can stop me

As I write this post, I am a frustrated man. Since embarking on a freelance career a couple of months ago, I have endeavored to find work, and to continue my education in new media. Both are being stymied by stubborn spam filters.

In the one case, I attempted to send a query letter to AARP Magazine. Yes, it seems that it would be a mag for old people, and since I get the magazine, that must mean that I'm too old to figure out how to send an email. I'm sure you're imagining something like this:

Me: What is this dang contraption? I don't see no flag to raise. Don't even see no mailbox. How's the postman gonna deliver my email to them nice younguns up at AARP Magazine? And where do I put the stamp?

Imaginary Younger Person: Gosh, Grampa, you don't need a stamp! Why, email is electronic. You just need to type it on your computer...

Me: My whatsis, now?

Imaginary Younger Person: Your computer. You know, that thing that sorta looks like a TV and a typewriter? You just type your letter and address it, and hit the send button. It's super simple.

Me: How's that, again?

Well, let me just tell you, that did not happen. You're the one with the Imaginary Young Person, not me. Besides which, Al Gore invented the Internet for people like me. I've been on it ever since Al sent me my first computer back in the 90s. I have always been the tech-forward guy in any group of people I worked with. Ask anybody.

I certainly know how to send an email, and I do not send spam. Each email is carefully crafted with loving attention to whoever has money they can pay me to write. And yet, AARPMagazine@aarp.org sees fit to reject my well-chosen notes with a note of it's own:

Delivery has failed to these recipients or distribution lists:
AARPMagazineMailForward@aarp.org
Your message wasn't delivered because of security policies. Microsoft Exchange will not try to redeliver this message for you. Please provide the following diagnostic text to your system administrator.

Hmmph. I am my system administrator. So this notion that "security policies" have kicked my query letter out of the system - preposterous. Still, this is the second time I've experienced something like that this week.

The other time involved Pinterest. I joined this glorified bulletinboard (or pin board, if you will) because I had been advising one of my clients to look into it. He's got products, and pictures of products, and URLS, and I figured Pinterest might be a good way for him to hang his goods out for the world to see them.

So I decided I'd see if there were any good legitimate reason for me to use it in my own business. I wanted to get the feel of it, so, when Pinterest offered to start following everyone in my contact list who happened to be on Pinterest, I said, "Sure, why not?" 

I said that electronically. I am not talking aloud to an imaginary manifestation of Pinterest sitting in my living room. I am not suffering from dementia.

So then, in the spirit of jumping in to figure it all out, I started pinning stuff myself. Frankly, I found it to be ridiculously fun, and addictive. I was considering joining a 12-step program, when Pinterest, like a wary bartender, decided I'd had one pin too many.

Here's what they wrote me:

Sorry!Wow! That's a lot of pins! We love your enthusiasm, but you've hit one of the blocks we have in place to combat spam. Please try again later. Learn moreabout this block and our Pin Etiquette. (pl4).

They 'love my enthusiasm' so much that they have, for all intents and purposes, banned me from posting anything to the boards I created. With that kind of love, who needs hate?

Hey, I live in the real world, where people sometimes actually go to jail for things they didn't do, and where false accusations are unfortunately common. And it's the same world where my email spam filters can't stop people from sending me thinly-disguised versions of the exact same email solicitations for unsavory things I don't want. The world I live in, actual spam is so bad that I actually stopped using Yahoo mail because it would get practically nothing else in the inbox. So I get the idea that SPAM IS BAD.

And that's why I don't send it. I therefore find it more than a little irksome to be a cyberlaw-abiding citizen who get's cuffed upside the head by well-meaning, but wrong electronic cops. Of course, it could be worse: the robots who reject my email could be REAL robots who come to my house and do some RoboCop-like damage when I accidentally transgress "pin etiquette."

So like many a wrongly-accused man, like Richard Kimball in "The Fugitive," I've got to live with it until I catch the one-armed man or O.J.'s real killer, or whoever is responsible for this mess. Meanwhile, I guess I'll go back to sending out query letters the old-fashioned way, and stick to using real pushpins to attach things only to real bulletin boards. And, while I'm at it, I'll go back to eating real Spam, because that's what old codgers do. Think I'll call up Al Gore and see if he's got some.