Can Spam Save the World?

April 20, 2004 3:28 PM

Can Spam Save the World?Mark Cuban, broadcast.com billionaire, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and Donald Trump wannabe (though he says he's not) is set to host a new "reality" show called The Benefactor. The winner gets $1 million bucks. This guy, who bought the terribly optimistic cubansmillion.com domain, claims he has a "well thought-out" 4-step plan to use the money to save the world. It sounds to me like it was conceived by the underwear gnomes. He fails to explain just how sending 50 million spam emails a day "generates 250 million dollars annually for charitable causes . ($5 in annual earnings per member enrolled.)" I'd be interested in hearing what others with experience in email marketing think. A viable idea or just crackpot self-promotion?
posted by sixdifferentways (14 comments total)

I vote crackpot.
posted by pizzasub at 3:39 PM on April 20, 2004

I bet the benefactor turns out to be a great reality show. Everyone is going to come out of the woodwork with their insane ideas for the show. I rarely watch anything remotely reality TV-esque, but this sounds like it could be a really funny show, if they play off everyone's greed and money lust.
posted by mathowie at 3:42 PM on April 20, 2004

All I know is that any idiot who thinks spam is good for anything needs to be turned into fertilizer.

The show might be interesting but really, why Mark Cuban? And can someone please, please, please do something about his incredibly awful looking Jose Canseco hairstyle? You'd think a billionaire could afford a decent hair cut.
posted by fenriq at 3:49 PM on April 20, 2004

why Mark Cuban?
He is a TV producer, iirc he produced the new Star Search show hosted by Arsenio Hall.
His hair fits him, nerdy nice, the times I met him...
posted by thomcatspike at 3:58 PM on April 20, 2004

1. Snatch up a domain name that involves a billionaire and his new TV show.

2. Devise a crackpot scheme to Make The World Better using spam.

3. ?????

4. Profit!
posted by davidmsc at 5:59 PM on April 20, 2004

When you win the million dollars, do you have to actually go through with your idea? Or can you just keep it and sit pretty for a while?
posted by banished at 6:05 PM on April 20, 2004

I don't think there are any published "rules" yet per se. They've said it's "a million dollars to do whatever you want", so it's possible someone could just keep it. Which I would imagine is this guy's plan for most of it - judging from his ridiculous ass-kissing language:
"pledges to save the world by doing for Philanthropy what Mark Cuban has done for Basketball." Please. Cuban took a so-so team, spent some money, and made it a better team. Hardly a feat that will go down in basketball history.
posted by sixdifferentways at 6:11 PM on April 20, 2004

Mark Cuban is supposed to be paying the winner with his own money. He also chooses the winner completely at his own whim. So it's not like they chose him as a host - it's actually his show. As thomcatspike mentioned, he's quite involved in TV production... he owns the channel HDNet, which explains why I happened to flip to it once and there was some special about the Dallas Mavericks cheerleader tryouts. In HD. :D

His blog is quite interesting if you follow NBA basketball.
posted by swank6 at 7:21 PM on April 20, 2004

This was making the rounds a while back among a bunch of us who used to work for Mark pre-Yahoo.

He's a great guy in person...very charismatic, super high energy, eerily intelligent, and has a funny, funny sense of humor. I'd say that Mark was probably my favorite boss in the 90's. I bet the show will be good fun.
posted by dejah420 at 8:42 PM on April 20, 2004

Ah, the good ole days, when spam merely promised to "MAKE MONEY FAST!!" rather than "HAVE HER CHOKING ON YOUR ENOURMOUS MEMBER!!" Whatever happened to that innocence we had?
posted by arto at 9:29 PM on April 20, 2004

"pledges to save the world by doing for Philanthropy what Mark Cuban has done for Basketball." Please. Cuban took a so-so team, spent some money, and made it a better team. Hardly a feat that will go down in basketball history.

And don't even mention tonight's heartbreaker of a game...

*grumbles*
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:51 PM on April 20, 2004

Huh? Spam is already saving the world
posted by Pericles at 1:21 AM on April 21, 2004

Oh, Pericles, don't even start. Heh.

I vote crackpot too, but he surely has Mark's attention, which is a solid start.

I trust Mark's smarter than to award the prize to a spam outfit, no matter how altruistic it is on the face of it.
posted by chicobangs at 10:16 AM on April 21, 2004

I don't understand. Why do you need any money to spam?

If I ever meet a spammer, I will punch them in the face.
posted by delmoi at 10:53 PM on April 21, 2004