I was browsing some of my spam recently. Good stuff, that.

Yes, I archive my spam, just like I archive everything else. There’s stuff to be learned from it, if nothing else that spam works; nobody would do this as much as they do without it working. The introduction of Bayesian anti-spam scanning made flat-out spamming less effective, and the resulting backlash by spammers has been quite marked and intense.

Specifically, they have to do their best to make spam messages appear as much as human-sent mail as possible; where before you could just spray the world, now there’s some (minor) amount of craft, trying to negotiate the defenses people are erecting around their mailboxes.

So, speaking of erecting, an awful lot of spam wants you to grow your penis. Or, more accurately, wishes you to purchase some items that will ostensibly grow your penis. Mazel Tov! This sure beats a visit to Dr. Whitehead.

The problem is that a lot of people don’t have a penis, or don’t want to enlarge their penis, and specifically don’t want to be queried on their current penis status via e-mail at work, sandwiched between their expense reports and meeting scheduling. So they have filters in place to prevent this penis mail from showing up.

The result, then, has been an amazing amount of effort to get around this with what can only be hand-crafted subject lines, all intended to both negotiate past the automatic filters and make the reader want to open it.

Browsing my most recent pack, I found the following hopelessly elaborate subject lines informing me that I need enlargement, should immediately pursue enlargement, and that sans enlargement I am a worthless being. Check these actual subject lines out:

• Have you ever felt a kiss of a womb? With your new big rod you’ll feel it!
• Your obtained manliness will be surely noticed by every girl
• Your baby-maker needs to be bigger in order to perform its functions well
• CAUTION! she might be tight when you reach your new size, stretching may be required
• A real man will never exchange his big penis for anything.
• are you the next man in the world to get super sized in the pants?
• True masculinity is impossible without a substantial volume of male meat
• This remedy is a true godsend for your little willy
• Men with big penises go to heaven.

I am struck by the attempts to craft subject lines that beckon you to click on them or otherwise read the contents. It’s a tough thing to cold-call someone into genital enhancement therapy that doesn’t actually work. Themes of self-worth and confidence make a huge showing, while implication of power and control abounds elsewhere. The implication that penis size leads to actual ascension into heaven is a nice desperate play as well.

There’s some insights to be gained here in terms of the realms of privacy and interaction; in a world where it is costless to communicate, communication intended to enrich the communicator becomes the de-facto dominant message. Right now, spam far outstrips any other communications I get through e-mail, percentage-wise: of the 52,000 e-mails I received in a recent 28 day period, 51,200 were spam. At that point, communication with humans is a rounding error.

But at least, buried among the shit and scandal in my spam folder, some poor dope is crafting elaborate calls to regard his penis enlargement scam, trying to rise above it all.

And failing.

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