Stop! In the Name of Gov

I just hope that the end of campaign season brings an end to the deluge of political spam texts. About half of mine address someone named John. But sadly, they are not Dear John letters. Dhruv Mehrotra feels our pain in Wired: My Journey to the Center of America’s Political Spam Text Hell. “For years, I diligently opted out. I’ve replied ‘STOP’ 49 times since 2021, by my phone’s count. Sometimes ‘Stop2End,’ when that was the magic word. In November 2025, I told Jon Ossoff’s campaign some version of ‘stop.’ It did not stop. Since then, I’ve received 13 more texts boosting his campaign, from nine different numbers. When the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee texted to inform me that Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden were calling me personally to action, I replied ‘eat shit.’ That didn’t work either.” (It says everything about what the internet has become that the most commonly typed word among humans is, Stop.)