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Study Finds Value in Email Spam
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon Jul 04, 2005 06:40 PM
from the better-than-the-porky-kind-anyway dept.
from the better-than-the-porky-kind-anyway dept.
Ant writes "According to a LiveScience story, a steady diet of email spam can be good for you. From the article: 'Researchers split a group of more than 2,100 Canadians into two groups. One group got e-mails that promoted healthy lifestyles, the other got none. "These were informative and motivational messages sent weekly for 12 weeks," explained study leader Ron Plotnikoff of the University of Alberta. The e-mails promoted the benefits of a good diet and physical activity. Those who were effectively spammed, as a group, saw their mean body mass index (BMI) go down, meaning it improved. BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. Overall BMI rose for the control group, which did not get the emails.'"
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"smapped"? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"smapped"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:"smapped"? (Score:3, Funny)
Second this. Honestly, I think I would rather spend 30 minutes listening to a supermarket "Irrashaimase! Irasshaimase! Reitou shokuhin! Reitou shokuhin!" loop tape than the equivalent amount of SMAP.
As for Yamada Denki, was just at the Jiyuugaoka store last weekend to pick up a new fan and was reminded why I hadn't been in the last 4 months.
I hope their pension plan includes therapy and straightjakets for employees who've had to suffer a lifetime
So obvious! (Score:5, Funny)
If you have a fat wife or fat children, you should tell them they're fat several times a day. And tell them they need to lose weight. And do it in front of company when people visit. And when they're at the dinner table, tell them they don't need seconds when they reach for something, because they're fat.
And tell your daughter she's ugly, so she'll do something about her face and maybe get some cosmetic surgery. And tell your son how stupid he is every chance you get so he'll be compelled to be an educated man.
And really, nothing gets a man to be a better husband and father than constantly reminding him what a pathetic, weak, insecure human being he is. Make sure you point out how he doesn't provide for the family the way some men do and that he has a long way to go before he could ever impress you or the children. Also, if you're an in-law, do this often to your son or daughter in-law. They will thank you for it someday, for making them a better human being.
And it's proven that little girls who play with (perfect bodied) barbies have much better self-images and are much healthier than other girls. And the images on magazines, MTV, movies and television only help to positively reinforce this good self-image throughout a young girl's growth.
This also works if you're a manager or employer. Make sure to set aside some time each day to ridicule your employees and point out their failures so that they'll do better. Tell them how lazy, stupid, non-productive and wasteful they are.
There is nothing more helpful and nothing people are more grateful for than having the obvious pointed out and being constantly reminded for it. And if you look at people today, the most successful and well-rounded and happy adults are always the ones that were told what ugly, fat, stupid, lazy failures they are their entire childhood.
Too bad this doesn't work for the penis extension thing.
Oh - and by the way, the study says "These were informative and motivational messages sent weekly for 12 weeks". How is that spam?
Re:So obvious! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:So obvious! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm guessing they didn't opt in, the email headers were forged, they were sent through open relays, and the mails included referral links to sleazy web sites offering related products.
Re:So obvious! (Score:2)
Seriously, that kind of thinking is incredibly 1950s.
Re:So obvious! (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps some people react positively to criticism by attempting to prove the critic wrong. But for many people, abusing them as you advise will only serve to lower their self-esteem and destroy any motivation they may have. For most of us, support and encouragement from those around us is generally m
Re:So obvious! - i'd say (Score:3, Insightful)
Obvious (Score:2)
Bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Funny)
Not sure quite what part of this is new (Score:3, Insightful)
Spam + Solicitation != Spam (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Spam + Solicitation != Spam (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, could the spam group differentiate between the genuine spam and the study's opt-in spam?
It's kind of like a blind test. Sure, you probably signed a waiver saying you're willing to receive extra "spam". But you don't know if you're receiving the extra spam or not, and if you are, you're not aware of which emails are the extra spam.
Parent
Re:Spam + Solicitation != Spam (Score:4, Interesting)
LS
Parent
Re:Spam + Solicitation != Spam (Score:5, Funny)
someone needs to smap the editors upside the head...
Parent
Re:Spam + Solicitation != Spam (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Get a group of 2,100 people together
2. Tell them you are doing a 3 month survey of their BMI
3. Choose a random half of the people to send the emails to, don't tell them it's you sending them though.(kind of stupid not to guess who it's coming from though isn't it?)
4. Collect Data
Parent
Re:Spam + Solicitation != Spam (Score:5, Insightful)
All I get is spam about illegal drugs or medication, genitalia modifications, unfortunate nigerians, porn or how my bank account details got lost again.
I also wonder as to the content of these spams; was it health tips or true spam advertising dangerous medication, and why did their BMI go down; because they started using illegally obtained or even banned meds?
Parent
Subliminal Messages? (Score:2, Funny)
The power of suggestion (Score:3, Insightful)
It is very similar to the rise in karate school enrollments after a popular martial arts movie like The Karate Kid is released. People take whatever they can from any message and sometimes those messages can lead to action. In this case it was towards weight loss, in others it is towards violence, in others it is towards humanity towards fellow humans.
Re:The power of suggestion (Score:2, Funny)
MMM Barnyards (Score:2)
Spammers don't send reminders to exercise you morons! They try to get you to buy penis enlargment pills.
Not exactly spam (Score:5, Insightful)
If I get an email with no commercial link, or promoting a particular product, its not spam. Spam is UCE, unwanted commercial email.
Ahhh (Score:5, Funny)
G_t outside now! Exercise! Stop using y0ur com_uter!
and shakespear donged a dozen fractal
nevermind is the people to much building
for Jill never news to many home funding
http://wexxx.shasz13.com/fsss/sm11/epl.cgi [shasz13.com]
Given that the very purpose of spam is often to sell products that are essentially empty promises, I'm going to write this study off as moot.
logically... (Score:2, Funny)
if
spam = sending people annoying messages
then
smap = sending messages to annoying people?
it stands to reason.
That's not spam at all (Score:5, Funny)
Are we gonna start calling every computer glitch a virus now, too?
Also, I bet that if the emails had been advertising actual spam, their bodies would have gotten fatter... and saltier.
Re:That's not spam at all (Score:2)
Why not? All the dumb bunnies have been blaming their mistakes on virii for years (as in "I can't find the document I wrote yesterday, it must be a virus").
Valued spam (Score:2, Funny)
obviously... (Score:3, Funny)
How appropriate.. (Score:5, Interesting)
And I just finished reading the Richard Feynman article on Cargo Cult Science. [huji.ac.il]
Article Text below as slashdotting prevention:
Cargo Cult Science
Richard Feynman
From a Caltech commencement address given in 1974. Also in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas--which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact, that we have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that they proposed ever really worked--or very little of it did.
But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFO's, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I've concluded that it's not a scientific world.
Most people believe so many wonderful things that I decided to investigate why they did. And what has been referred to as my curiosity for investigation has landed me in a difficulty where I found so much junk that I'm overwhelmed. First I started out by investigating various ideas of mysticism and mystic experiences. I went into isolation tanks and got many hours of hallucinations, so I know something about that. Then I went to Esalen, which is a hotbed of this kind of thought (it's a wonderful place; you should go visit there). Then I became overwhelmed. I didn't realize how MUCH there was.
At Esalen there are some large baths fed by hot springs situated on a ledge about thirty feet above the ocean. One of my most pleasurable experiences has been to sit in one of those baths and watch the waves crashing onto the rocky slope below, to gaze into the clear blue sky above, and to study a beautiful nude as she quietly appears and settles into the bath with me.
One time I sat down in a bath where there was a beatiful girl sitting with a guy who didn't seem to know her. Right away I began thinking, "Gee! How am I gonna get started talking to this beautiful nude woman?"
I'm trying to figure out what to say, when the guy says to her, "I'm, uh, studying massage. Could I practice on you?" "Sure," she says. They get out of the bath and she lies down on a massage table nearby. I think to myself, "What a nifty line! I can never think of anything like that!" He starts to rub her big toe. "I think I feel it," he says. "I feel a kind of dent--is that the pituitary?" I blurt out, "You're a helluva long way from the pituitary, man!" They looked at me, horrified--I had blown my cover--and said, "It's reflexology!" I quickly closed my eyes and appeared to be meditating.
That's just an example of the kind of things that overwhelm me. I also looked into extrasensory perception, and PSI phenomena, and the latest craze there was Uri Geller, a man who is supposed to be able to bend keys by rubbing them with his finger. So I went to his hotel room, on his invitation, to see a demonstration of both mindreading and bending keys. He didn't do any mindreading that succeeded; nobody can read my mind, I guess. And my boy held a key and Geller rubbed it, and nothing happened. Then he told us it works better under water, and so you can picture all of us standing in the bathroom with the water turned on and the key under it, and him rubbing the key with his finger. Nothing happened. So I was unable to investigate that phenomenon.
But then I began to think, what else is there that we believe? (And I thought then about the witch doctors, and how easy it would have been to check on them by noticing that nothing really worked.) So I found things that even mor
Re:How appropriate.. (Score:4, Informative)
But on to the parent post:
Cargo Cult Science
Richard Feynman
From a Caltech commencement address given in 1974. Also in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
It's been a long time (16+ years) since I read "Surely You're Joking,..." so this was an interesting re-read, especially in light of what I've read since then: Susan Blackmore's "The Adventures of a Parapsychologist," current edition titled "Searching For The Light."
Blackmore wrote of being the first to get a Master's degree in parapsychology, and what she did along the way to getting it. Her "downfall" was strict adherence to methods Feynman wrote about. She started enthusiastically enough, believing she would be the one to prove the existence of some sort of ESP phenomenon, doing many experiments designed to detect it, but all of them failing. She had colleagues that had successful experiments (showing someething statistically unlikely), but she always found problems and irregularities with their experiments. She was labeled psi-negative.
What struck me was how these people, even with their motivation to find hard evidence that they thought was "just around the corner," were unable to find it, but they kept on going, because they BELIEVED it was there, in the same sense as a religious believer.
At the time I had some spurious beliefs brought about by having been around a "good group of people" for a few years. I was already questioning some of these beliefs before I read Blackmore's book, and while reading it my (actually the group's) beliefs fell like a house of cards. I suppose I should be, uh, 'grateful' that I read Blackmore's book.
Feynman mentions Rhine (click on the parent's "Read the rest of this comment..." link), and Blackmore writes about visiting the USA and meeting him, and she and others had a seance or some such with him. Rhine was defininely the most respected person in parapsychology, making his suggestion of picking only the positive-testing students all the more outrageous.
Parent
SCREW This! (Score:2, Interesting)
Okay, I acually RTGDFA. Screw this crap!
Those who were effectively smapped, as a group, saw their mean body mass index (BMI) go down, meaning it improved. BMI i
Much spam is de-motivational (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if this makes some spam a health threat.
All this 'proves'.... (Score:5, Funny)
They obtain large government grants on the strength of elaborate proposals that, when passed through a suitably calibrated crap filter, say nothing, then spend the money buying iPods for their kids, and laptops and broadband for their favourite researcher's kid sister. Once the money is gone, they come up with a paper that says "When two houseflies crawl up a wall, it makes no difference to the average vertical speed of either housefly whether his counterpart is standing on his left or his right.", get published in a journal, get a free trip to speak at a conference somewhere, then they go back to square one and start writing up an application for another grant.
[sarcasm] I can't wait until I've finished my doctorate so I can hop on this gravy train [/sarcasm]
#disclaimer.not: All examples of corruption in this post are real.
Re:All this 'proves'.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, don't get me started on unemployment benefits! I went down that path for a brief period here in Australia a few years ago. The system here, with all the paperwork and justifications is just painful. They want to know about all your bank accounts and stuff too, so if you have a cent to your name, you're not eligible. Save up enough money to pay for registration on a car so you can improve your chances of getting a job by saying "I have a car and I can use it to get to work" and they'll withold your benefits until you've spent that money on surviving.
The Australian unemployment benefits system is designed to kick you down and keep you down - once you're at rock bottom, they do eveything they can to prevent you from getting back up.
It was easier to not eat and live on the street for a while than it was to satisfy those bastards!
Parent
Thats not spam (Score:2)
Once a week? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now what if they sent 5 or 10 a day, every day? Wonder if the test group would be paying attention to the message then.
Hmm... (Score:2)
Hardly "spam" (Score:2)
Bogus Article / Bogus Research (Score:5, Insightful)
Spam is universally acknowledged as unsolicited, deceptive, indiscriminate, often illegal and immoral solicitations.
If they want to do a legitimate study on spam, then use spam, NOT uplifting e-mail messages.
Wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, and (Score:5, Funny)
At least, I think it helps. I'll do some studies.
Pressing "Delete" burns fat! (Score:5, Funny)
Don't waste your time RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)
BMI doesn't measure body fat (Score:5, Informative)
That isn't just quackery, it's medically dangerous.
Re:who cares (Score:2)
Re:who cares (Score:3, Funny)
Re:who cares (Score:2)