Guilty Internet Pleasures – DontEvenReply.com

“There are 5,000 great people for every jerk on Usenet.  But that still is a lot of jerks.  Proceed with caution and eyes wide open.”  - Don Rittner

Dictionary.com defines the word authenticate as a verb meaning “to establish as valid or genuine”. Back in the old days of the Web in the mid 90s, the mechanisms for authentication were pretty crude and easy to compromise. With so much money to be made though in e-commerce, it was only a matter of time before those issues were solved.

So it wasn’t long before protocols like Secure Sockets and technologies such as public key-private key encryption were embedded in Web Clients and Web Servers. Nowadays, one doesn’t think twice about logging into a bank’s web application, assured that the https in the front of that URL means that the other end of that connection really is one’s bank and not some scam artist.

Across other web sites and online communities, however, there is a wide variety of authentication techniques that are employed, such as simple email address verification, where you register by providing a valid email address and then are sent an email to that address that contains a registration code. In most of these cases, you really have no authentication – you have no idea who is on the other end of that address. Many of these communities have rating or flagging systems to highlight rogue members. But the inherent openness and anonymity of the Web results in an environment ripe for exploitation by unsavory characters or immature jerks. 

Sometimes the immature jerk is clever, hilarious, and twisted. Such is the case with John Lindsay, the developer of DontEvenReply.com (subtitled E-mails From an Asshole).

(This is truly a guilty pleasure. It probably reveals something about my character that I enjoy this web site so much, though I am not sure exactly what it reveals. BTW – Warning - the email exchanges contain adult language and content.)

Here is Lindsay’s shtick: He posts responses to online classified ads in an attempt to “mess with them, confuse them, and/or piss them off”. Them being the originator of the ad. The email exchanges between Lindsay and his targets are then posted and the DontEvenReply community can comment on and rate those exchanges. A simple and juvenile concept.

Though I haven’t completed a review of all the exchanges, I am struck by how stupid and oblivious the victims are to the scam or how absurd some of the original ads actually are. Some highlights for me so far are:

• Paying by Prayer, in which the victim is in desperate need of a Blu-ray player, but is low on cash and barters with prayers before chastising Lindsay for “misunderstanding the purpose of prayer”. That is freaking gold right there!
• Vegan Housemate highlights a hilarious exchange between Lindsay and a vegan seeking a roommate. “Don't worry though, both the shotguns are registered and the assault rifle has the serial numbers filed off of it so it doesn't have to be registered.”
• Turtle Sandbox where Lindsay tries to convince the victim that he really shouldn’t assemble a swing set for his son because of its inherent danger and instead should purchase Lindsay’s $300 turtle-shaped sandbox.