This works, how?

The topic tonight: Spam. Since about 7:00am – 12 hours – 61 messages have accumulated in my yahoo account. The subject matter covers the usual spectrum of enticing products/services: Personal growth (appendage enlargement), Healthcare (questionable pharmacuetical products, some related to the hopefully enlarged appendage), Entertainment (women in varying stages of..you know), Financial growth (coupons for watches, department stores you’ve not yet tried, cars. Cars?), Education (student loans..from who knows where), Real Estate (discount mortgages – pre-approved! Yeah, we know what a good idea THAT is these days!!), and my personal favorite, Charitable Giving (That guy from Malaysia, or is it Cambodia?). Oops, almost forgot the ones in some sort of Asian writing. Brilliant. Yeah, send the japanese spam to someone with a decidely european last name!! Anyway, bypassing the fact that these “ads” are clearly not going out to a target market given that they have my gender and nationality (at a minimum) totally wrong, does anyone know WHY spam is there? I mean, other than the fact that someone is paying hackers to send these blasts of e-garbage out, WHY? The personal growth vendor pays someone to get the word out because there is actually a high enough percentage of receivers who *don’t* ignore/delete immediately and actually make a purchase? Someone must be clicking and buying, right? WHO??? I mean, I know that it takes all kinds in this world, but really, are there THAT MANY?

It boggles my mind. And there is probably a drug for that. And I will get a message with a Very Special Offer for it tomorrow.