That is exactly what you shouldn't do, find some other way to take out your frustration... yell at your wife, kick the dog, break something... whatever.
But seriously, you did exactly what they wanted. This is from the linked article:
Even if you know the text is fraudulent, she says it is important to avoid the urge to text them a few choice words or a simple “stop.” Don’t engage at all “Even a seemingly innocent reply to the message can tip scammers off that your number is live and active,” Bunn said.
This isn't some loser with a laptop in his Mom's basement, it's a large-scale, organized operation.
Aidan Holland, senior security researcher at threat research platform Censys, has been extensively tracking toll scams and agrees that they are likely perpetuated by Chinese criminals overseas. Holland has identified 60,000 domains, which he estimates cost the criminals $90,000 to buy in bulk and use to launch attacks. “You don’t invest that much unless you are getting some kind of return,” Holland said.
There's another scam involving PayPal that generated a flood of e-mail spam for me a week or two ago. It was cc'ed to a long list of other (innocent) addresses, and those people were responding to the spam with very abusive messages (like yours, but with real obscenities and not %!#*). That really made it much worse. All those people are now also on my spam list.
