This entry was posted on Saturday, July 2nd, 2005 at 5:34 PM and is filed under Technology and Social Implications thereof, Religion, Philosophy, and the Nature of Truth.

Some of those cute girls from Russia that spam your e-mail inbox on your dating site are nothing but Russia spammers looking to get some money from you. I had received a message on a dating site that I no longer use from some such person, and that is how I found that link.

This is one of the things that I love about the internet. If it can be shared, it will be shared, and if it will be shared, it will be searchable, and if it is searchable, people can, will, and do, find it.

Of course, I realize that mentioning things like this may lead people inexorably to sites like this which claim to have the truth about Russian mail order brides, which, despite its best intention, speaks of them in language that, in my opinion, dehumanizes them into something slightly more than some exotic pet.

The internet, despite all of its potential, also, in this case, reveals to me something that I must sadly accept as being just another facet of human nature: people do not seem to see, know, understand, how to relate to other people as people, sometimes.

I mean seriously, after only 6 e-mails (and no phone calls) some of those spammers are pleading for money to use to get a visa and pay for travel to come visit. What kind of fool does something like that? What kind of fool expects someone to do something like that?

I think it is clear that often the people on both sides of these possible “mail order bride” situations have issues. I’m not saying that it can’t work out, and I’m not saying some of that stuff isn’t legitimate, but I am saying that there’s some serious stuff going down and that the Russian proverb popularized by Ronald Reagan would be worth heading: “Trust, but verify.”

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