The Man Who Loves Spam.

March 15, 2004 12:57 PM

The Man Who Loves Spam "[Orlando] Soto routinely comes home to some 150 e-mail pitches, and he loves getting them all. The 45-year-old grandfather opens most of them. He answers spam questionnaires. And he buys stuff pitched in spam e-mail -- again and again." Ugh. Thanks a lot, Mr. Soto. You're keeping this industry alive. (WSJ link, via Obscure Store.)
posted by GaelFC (25 comments total)

Wow, his dick must be HUGE by now.
posted by Divine_Wino at 1:11 PM on March 15, 2004

So he has the world's largest penis, and the world's lowest interest rates?
posted by benjh at 1:13 PM on March 15, 2004

Strangely, however, the spam hawking pills to get obsessive-compulsive disorder under control just passes him RIGHT by.

"Paxil...pass. Luvox... leave it. Zoloft... Zorry! But wait... Oooooh! Very rare one-of-a-kind only-offered-once act-today bobble head dolls of Russian Czars! I'M SO THERE!"
posted by tittergrrl at 1:25 PM on March 15, 2004

And huge breasts.
posted by ilsa at 1:25 PM on March 15, 2004

And college degrees from fake schools and millions of "unfounded" dollars from Nigeria and fuller plumper lips and I'm sure there are a couple of dozen Orlando Soto's out there now with his SSN running up credit debt like there's no tomorrow.

Mr. Soto should be banned from the internet permanently.

On a more serious question, why can't spam cops follow the money to the spammers?
posted by fenriq at 1:29 PM on March 15, 2004

why am I not surprised that he's a smoker?
posted by 2sheets at 2:13 PM on March 15, 2004

An uplifiting story about a man whose life is so empty his "hobby" is purchasing pharmaceuticals and other unnecessary junk peddaled by potentially illegitimate and dangerous sources, ostensibly using personal credit cards over unsecure sites.

This is also a man who, at 45, is responsible for the existence of two generations of humans.

This is a glowing example of how capitalism has failed at the hands of irresponsible consumers.
posted by wigu at 2:22 PM on March 15, 2004

Thank god for Mr. Soto -- without him, and people like him, I'd be screwed.

...but with folks like him around, whenever someone asks me "WHY do you want to murder two billion people?" I can just point to Mr. Soto, and suddenly everyone understands me.
posted by aramaic at 2:33 PM on March 15, 2004

"Thanks a lot, Mr. Soto. You're keeping this industry alive."

It might be more productive to think on the idea that people like Mr Soto drive a multi billion dollar industry even though almost all Internet users are determined to see that industry vanish.

I think it would be better for us to all seek out people like Soto and offer to be their friend. We don't need new protocols or spam filters, we just need a big brother program. Or maybe we could give them MetaFilter memberships. With something to do with their spare time they might not have time for spam.
posted by y6y6y6 at 3:14 PM on March 15, 2004

Orlando Soto is my superintendent. Seriously.

He's not the friendliest guy. In fact, his inability to be all that good around people probably drives his desire to only buy stuff online.

And my pipes haven't been fixed properly for going on two years now. I'm just saying.

(And it pisses me off that all it takes to get in the WSJ is to be a proud of your own gullibility.)

He's coming over tomorrow morning (the pipes, always with the pipes). I'll see how interested he is in talking about this.
posted by chicobangs at 3:57 PM on March 15, 2004

This guy clearly has a problem with his buying habits. He's not just gullible - it's something more. Consider:

But it's the bargains that keep him devouring spam, including a $150 metal detector he recently bought. Good spam, he says, leaves him feeling blessed and telling himself, "I can't believe this really came."

Who the hell needs a metal detector? But he feels good when it comes. What a sad, pathetic man.
posted by Dasein at 5:02 PM on March 15, 2004

Chicobangs, that's wild. Maybe you can send him some Spam advertising a pipe-fixing kit and he'll finally fix your pipes...
posted by GaelFC at 5:06 PM on March 15, 2004

I love that the picture of him looks like a police mock-up.
posted by abcde at 5:49 PM on March 15, 2004

Maybe you can clock this dumb bugger across the back of the head and knock some sense into him.
posted by five fresh fish at 6:03 PM on March 15, 2004

chicobangs, please report back! i'm curious how he got in the WSJ.
posted by mrgrimm at 6:23 PM on March 15, 2004

my friend drew a comic on a similar topic a while back...
posted by joedan at 6:41 PM on March 15, 2004

He must be the only person in the world who is prepared to admit to actually reading spam, never mind buying from these scum. chicobangs, please give him a smack upside the head for me when you see him, will you? Make sure he has fixed your pipes first, of course.
posted by dg at 8:22 PM on March 15, 2004

Okay. I just got home, I'm kind of hammered, but I'll take a tally. That's two smacks in the head and a what-the-hell-are-you-thinking. Check.

Let me tell you, from experience, the odds are even that he'll not show up before I have to go to work.* I shall report back on his reaction to becoming the most famous spam customer in the world. (That pic is eerily accurate. I don't know how the WSJ does those portraits, but -- wow. That might be one for AskMe. But not tonight.)

This is fascinating, though. The fact that someone (my super. jeezus.) has owned up to being a repeat spam customer is a big deal.

*The plot thickened tonight - I was out with a WSJ friend of mine, and I got some more backstory (I really didn't want to know about his dabbling in the porn business, but whatever). I might be comparing notes with her tomorrow as well. I'll post some relevant details in this thread as I can find them out. Now, I'm off to bed.
posted by chicobangs at 11:45 PM on March 15, 2004

Get his email address. If he likes spam I'm sure some people can make sure he gets a whole lot more.
posted by skallas at 12:02 AM on March 16, 2004

Yeah - to start with, I have about 4,000 that I have kept (no, I don't know why) that I would be only too happy to forward to him.
posted by dg at 1:25 AM on March 16, 2004

When I started reading this I thought there's only about 200 active spammers but how many people respond? It's got to be less than that right? So what we should do is instead of legislating against spammers, we should lock up people responding to spam. And they'll be easier to catch because they won't be trying so hard to hide!

OK, maybe not...

Anyway, I read further in to the article and saw this:
On shelves in one bedroom were dozens of bottles of essential oils: clary sage, cinnamon, tea tree and carrot seed. Ms. Kennedy uses the oils in homemade soaps she sells via her aromatherapy business.
Coming to your mailbox soon: soap spam!
posted by dodgygeezer at 2:02 PM on March 16, 2004

I can vouch for the size of his apartment; it's not all that big, especially for a middle-aged couple. They must have no room whatsoever for anything other than packages.

Oh, no news yet on any of the fronts I promised earlier (no news from him, I was late for work today, etc.). I'll follow up when I can, if anyone wants to know more.

(I'm guessing they found him through his wife, who might have mentioned something to one of her clients, for what it's worth.)
posted by chicobangs at 2:16 PM on March 16, 2004

If mail-order via spam resulted in, say, Kaczynski-style packages being delivered to those dumb enough to participate in spam transactions... well, I imagine the problem would resolve itself in short order.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:57 PM on March 16, 2004

Well? Did you ever brave the lion in his den dork in your plumbing-challenged apartment?
posted by gleuschk at 7:55 AM on March 26, 2004

Yeah, what happened?
posted by interrobang at 11:33 PM on March 30, 2004