Spam me if you dare

I got a few emails this morning from an internet acquaintance, via last.fm. They were both invites to a club night, I gather when you create an event on last.fm, it gives you the option to send out invites to specific people, with a personal message.

Two identical messages.

Now, in the email, the part labelled 'personal message' wasn't a personal message, it wasn't to me, it was write as if to a crowd of people who'd all been along for the ride. I was almost tempted to round up a crowd of people to all read the email at the same time, but didn't. Emails are individual things.

Sure when you write them, you could be addressing a crowd of people, but when you recieve an email, there's no crowd, just you and your inbox. I don't like being addressed as a crowd, twice, when its just me.

I'm pretty shy outwith the internet, I stand on my own at the back. If I really make an effort, if I try really hard, I get over my shyness. If someone holds my hand and walks me through, then its not so hard. But most of the time, I stand on my own, take it easy, and don't bother.

I'm not a crowd.

I got another spam email this morning, it was pretty amusing. Some chap using a Scottish Power email address was sorting out his own gig spam system and sent about three hundred email address and names to all three hundred addresses. Pissed off as I already was with my phone and from being impersonally spammed at, it took me a few second to send a reply to the Scottish Power chap, trying to extort money from him in return for not signing up all the email addresses to every porn spam site I could find and doing a reply to all.

The chap didn't pay up, but learnt an important lesson about how to use the blind carbon copy email protocol and not to use his work email address.

Now, back to the two spams from an internet acquaintance via last.fm. On one of the popular internet messageboards I frequent, they'd also posted an advert about the event. Messageboards, you can address a crowd there, because they're generally open access, many people read the same message, as a crowd, many people can comment to it and see what other people have written. Its a different thing to email.

Unlike BillBones-esque random dunno who these chumps are but I'll try to yell at them until they listen to my damned Superman band, the internet acquaintance had a vague idea who they were addressing, what sort of people would read it, and maybe some specific people who would read it. Maybe, in the words of the heart-shaped creature on my shoulder, its not too much of an arched eyebrow sideways leap of fancy, to assume that the internet acquaintance knew I'd read it.

So why bother sending the email gig spam too? This combined effort doesn't make me want to go to the club night.

Its not just the overloading of spam. I am a person, I exist in real life, I have feelings and emotions and a crazy eratic personality. I've spent the past twelve months going to as many indiepop, anti-folk, mates in bands, comedy, ukulele, tweepop, psychedelia gigs as is humanly possible. I wrote about it too. It was mostly a lonely lonely road.

Standing in the same room as the same people listening to the same music, filled me with crushing feelings of loneliness. Seeing the same people at all the shows and knowing I could never talk to them, and they would never talk to me, all we have is the shared experience of gazing at the same band.

Of course this is bullshit.

I know this, and you, if you follow this blog and the one before it, know its bullshit. But sometimes I feel that way, most of all when its a bandless club night. The last record-playing club night I can remember going to was the NPL just before New Year, I hung about with the Drive Carefully crew and the Plimp clan, my circle interacting with the Glasgow Bowlie set. But even so, my nerves got the better me, the girl was in the corner of my eye, and I fled. Back in my car, four hundred miles, quaking all the way.

Spam is yelling, spam from friends is insulting.
Looking me in the eye, or holding my had and saying "hey are you coming to this?" I will follow to the end of the world. Christ, Nos hasn't been in The Loves for five years and I still go to every show.