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Re: Engineering to deal with the social problem of spam

2003-06-08 07:23:24
Eric writes:

This sounds quite dangerous a way of thinking to me.

Nothing particularly dangerous about it.  Adults seem to readily forget that
they were completely uninterested in sex prior to puberty; things sexual
(including pornography) were nothing more than curiosities that rapidly
became boring on those rare occasions when they were encountered.  Adults
have a built-in obsession with sex; prepubescent children do not.

It's rather like gambling addicts assuming that anyone who walks past a
casino cannot resist running in and squandering his life's savings on
gambling.  That may well be a danger for gambling addicts, but it is not a
danger for anyone else, and in fact the addict is just projecting his own
behavior and preoccupations onto others.  Thus, the general public doesn't
need to be kept away from casinos, because most people don't care about
casinos, anyway--even though gambling addicts may behave self-destructively
when exposed to casino activity.

And proven to be quite erroneous ...

I'm not aware of any invalidation of this principle, and it is regularly
confirmed.

... look at how the cigarette manufacturers focus on
youth as the ideal target for advertising.

Sex and cigarettes are not the same thing.  Nobody is interested in sex
prior to puberty; everyone is interested in it after puberty.  In contrast,
an interest in cigarettes is strictly acquired, and in fact must be
explicitly sought out, since smoking is not by nature a pleasant activity at
any age.

They know they must attack them very young to
bind them on the long run and make them addicted
customers later, when they are grown-up.

There is no need to "attack" youngsters with pornography; they will become
potential consumers at puberty, whether they are exposed to it prior to that
age or not.  And conversely, they won't care about pornography until they
reach puberty--they'll just see it as something icky and boring, if they run
across it at all.

So, in short : *maybe* only adults care about cigarettes
and sex (not sure of), but I think both are - or could be
- the target of choice for advertisers, because it seems
that when you catch them young enough, you
create a bigger, deeper addiction.

No spammers are deliberately advertising porn to children; apart from legal
risks, it's a waste of time, rather like advertising refrigerators to
Eskimos.  They are trying to spam _adults_ with porn ads.  And given how
much traffic on the Internet is dedicated to porn, they probably get quite a
return on their investment--from the grown-ups, not from kids.

P.S.: and it appears to be similar with alcohol,
candies, cars, computers, drugs, gambling, guns, pets, etc.

None of these have a biological basis.  Sex does.  The distinction is
important.




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