Degradation of E-mail Convenience

A few years back, I still remember getting my first e-mail account. Rocket mail... ah the memories. For the first time in my life, I'd be able to send a message with just a touch of a button. Sure in that time we weren't graced with rich formating, hyper links, I'm-gonna-send-you-my-whole-freakin-life story sized attachment, but it did what it was set out to do... Reach.

You send it, it gets there. Nothing more simpler than that. I didn't have to worry whether or not my friend was getting the junk (let's not ask what 'junk' is shall we) I was sending, or whether the girl I had a crush on got my heartfelt words (as convenient as it would have been at that time to blame the technology for the lack of replies (T_T))... Well not anymore, those sweet days are over. Without even knowing it, the words that you took hours to pour your heart in ends up being gobbled away by some cold-hearted spam filter.

The thing is these days, almost 70% of mail that comes to your inbox is SPAM. Earth defiling scum ridden SPAM. Since seeing 300 mails urging you to 'power up' or investing in some Nigerian con fund is hardly an attractive reason to check your inbox regularly, spam filters were created. Sure these things are a miracle, and without it life would be full of deleting-while-cursing episodes, but the thing is spams are getting more elusive and as response spam filters are getting much more aggressive. Too aggressive at some points.

Spam filters function on a basis of setting up blocking algorithms. Certain words, company names, flags, hyper links, not-so-friendly terms, length of mailing list, English only? (true for some japan mail servers), the list goes on and on. So long are the days of sending a mail to a long list of buddies about your recent exploits. There's always a chance one of your mail won't be received or simply pushed over to the abyss of bulk/spam box, where is will lie shivering lost in a stream of crap, doomed not be read till the end of time.

To know it'll definitely reach. It's a convenience I can't live without.

Blogging off....