I got this e-mail today. It was absurd enough to put up here. Take a look:

From:Jacinda Pearson
To:webmaster@hotelblues.com
Subject:hotelblues.com

I discovered hotelblues.com in Yahoo, my favorite directory. I am requesting that you create a link from hotelblues.com to my client’s web site if you feel that their content is in some way related or complements your site. In exchange, I’ll post a link from their site to yours.

Exchanging links will help bring in more business for both your web site and my client’s. An added benefit is increased search engine traffic because the search engines rank sites higher that have a good number of relevant links.

This is not a free-for-all link exchange, I don’t waste my time with them and you shouldn’t either. I am only linking to related web sites so that all my links are relevant to my site.

I would like to send you my client’s web address, so that you can review their site. My client is a leading corporate team building and teamwork consulting firm providing fun leadership skills development, management training, and teambuilding programs.

Please let me know if you are interested in exchanging links. I’ll send you more details once I hear back from you.

Looking forward to your reply.

Sincerely,
Jacinda Pearson
jacindapearson@link-builder.com
http://www.link-builder.com

P.S. If for any reason you don’t want me to contact again, just email me and let me know.

The part that says:

My client is a leading corporate team building and teamwork consulting firm providing fun leadership skills development, management training, and teambuilding programs.

That made me laugh. Because it makes me wonder if these assholes even read the sites they send spam out to. Because I wonder if people read Hotelblues.com and think “this guy needs links to sites that are a leading corporate team building and teamwork consulting firm providing fun leadership skills development, management training, and teambuilding programs”. Either this person didn’t read this site or I’m losing my touch.

Of course the site they mention in the e-mail has a faq. Here is what they say about their e-mail being spam:

That is a difficult question to answer because of the many different definitions of SPAM. The first thing to note is that most state laws governing SPAM have to do with advertising for a commercial purpose. Exchanging links hardly falls into that condition. And the federal government has not enacted any SPAM laws governing this condition.

Sounds like they are dodging the question. Spam to me is when someone sends me shit that I didn’t ask for. And that’s what this e-mail is spam. I would e-mail this chick back just to see what her “clients” site was, but I would just be giving them a reason to spam me more.