I find few things funnier than responding to spammers. I know this is childish and stupid and pointless, and I don’t care. It just makes me laugh, dammit. DOES ANYONE REMEMBER LAUGHTER?!*

For a while, I would directly respond to every spambot who “mentioned” me on Twitter. Unfortunately, I found that the number of spam tweets I received increased exponentially each time I did this. The supply of spambots soon outgrew my own demand to write snotty responses to them, and so I abandoned this pastime.

I have an email address associated with this site, which I check with increasing irregularity because it’s become little more than a spam magnet. But last week, I received one email that cracked me up because it was so off the mark. Even though this email is, in all likelihood, just a phishing tactic, the fact that it has not even the slightest relation to the purpose of this site delighted me.

I was fully aware that responding to this email would be like yelling into an abandoned mineshaft just to make myself laugh. But that’s basically what I do on this site anyway, so why not? Here’s what I wrote back.

I barely had time to chuckle at my own cleverness before this response arrived.

I responded thusly.

What did any of this do, ultimately? Nothing except earn me a spot on some spambot’s “active address” list. But it’s a small price to pay for making myself laugh for a moment, isn’t it? Unless it somehow leads to my account being hacked and my personal information stolen and my credit rating being ruined. That would be the opposite of a small price to pay. But hey, what are the odds of that? DON’T TELL ME.

* This line in The Song Remains the Same, Robert Plant’s attempt at profundity, makes me laugh almost as much as John Bonham drag racing during his half hour “Moby Dick” drum solo. Or the idea that John Bonham thought people both wanted to hear a half hour drum solo AND watch him drag race while doing it.