Why you should consider sending earnest spam | nair.sh
Why you shouldconsider sendingearnest spam<br>Tuhin Nair10 min read24th May, 2026
Let’s start lightly: imagine you’re a colonizer.<br>How do you show up unannounced to a land where people don’t look like you, talk like you, think like you, and probably, dislike you?<br>And more importantly, how do you stop them from killing you?<br>Because they definitely want to kill you. People, tribes, nations, all hate unsolicited visits from strangers.<br>It’s a difficult question. The best colonizers used kidnapping and subterfuge, but even then, at some point they had to come up with ways to bridge a gap between people who don’t like or trust them.<br>But we’ll come back to colonization in a minute. Let’s go to the year 2003 for a second.<br>In 2003, 80% of Americans said they were bothered by the deceptive content of email spam.[1] Later that year, California took the charge and heroically said (in my words) “You absolutely need to ask permission first! No more sending commercial emails without getting consent.”[2]<br>But then, right after, a federal law (meaning at the national level) was passed (overruling California’s state law) saying unsolicited commercial email is fine until someone complains about it. You don’t need to ask for permission first.[3]<br>What? Why? Everybody hates it! Even if we ignore all the money and lobbying and technical problems for a second, what narrative could possibly justify this when everybody hates it?<br>They used (in my words): the underprivileged.<br>They said that (in my words) if you have no money and no connections you need inexpensive ways to seek out commercial opportunities.[4] They claimed that it’s a fundamental freedom of speech we must maintain for commerce.[5]<br>And yet, do you know who refuses to use this channel because it’s been abused by marketers and scammers to the point of universal, moralistic disdain?<br>The non-malicious underprivileged; those seeking fair opportunity with no money or connections.<br>Spammers have abused the system to the point where those who depend on it feel like they’re doing something wrong by using it.<br>So, in this post, we’ll see how a well-meaning person can use unsolicited email to connect to existing networks without having any preexisting connections or money (and how to do it right when everyone hates it).[Note 1]<br>But first: why does spam need to exist, even if it’s so hated?
For idiot’s sake (yes, yes, my sake), let’s say this is the economy:
For some, if you were born well, we could place you here, already connected to the network:
For most people, if you’re smart, stable, hard-working, and lucky, you could work your way through a prestigious institution and become somewhat well-known:
That’s about as meritocratic as the world gets. We rely on certain institutions for determining merit, and if you can get into them, they’re your best bet for joining the economy.<br>The better your institution, the better your merit, and the stronger you’re pulled into the network. It works well.<br>But the number of institutions, and their capacities, are limited. There’s a limit on how many people can go through them at once to attain this clear proof of merit.<br>So, what happens if you want to be a part of the network but you find yourself in a position with no pull, with no preexisting connections, or in a weak institution, or with no institution at all?<br>You, unfortunately, float.
Still, if you can afford it, you might be able to advertise yourself into visibility, hoping people will eventually pull you in.
But what if you don’t have the money to pay for visibility?<br>Well, that’s one of the arguments (earnest or not) made by the lobbyists for allowing unsolicited email to be legal.[6] When people are in a situation where they have no pull into a network, we need to preserve their right to try and …<br>… push into the network.<br>Push or pull. Those are the only two ways, in nature, that messages travel between communicators. Either your message gets pulled by the network,
or you push your message into it.
But the network, quite rightly, doesn’t like people trying to push too hard into it. This is what happens when someone abuses pushing:
A single unsolicited message (still called spam) is not the real problem. What makes it abusive is when an unsolicited message is broadcast onto a network. A single message, created once, can be sent to everyone in the network, forcing everyone to individually deal with the message. And now, creating and copying a message, using phone or email, is very easy. So, people who don’t care about the members of the network can easily and cheaply abuse everyone’s time, space, and attention.<br>This is the spam we know. This is the spam we hate. This is the spam the legislation was trying to deal with.<br>Some countries, like Germany and Canada, try their best to make it as difficult as possible to push into the network.[7][8] In both those countries, similar to what California tried in 2003, you need to ask for...