ASCII by Jason Scott

Jason Scott's Weblog

A Substantial Volume of Man Meat —

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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6 Comments

  1. Flack O'Hara says:

    Here are some of my favorites, sitting in my own inbox:

    Show that you’re a real man deserving a real phallus!
    Don’t let your average sized dick spoil your romance!
    Enter the New Year with a bigger penis!
    Become really well hung in year 2008!
    What do you want for Christmas? Maybe a bigger male package?
    Forget about problems caused by your 4 inch penis!
    You won’t need to furtively put socks into your trunks anymore!

    …and my favorite…

    Turn your small knob into a huge meat stick!

  2. pjm says:

    You’ve saved me the trouble of writing up my own observations on the subject; yours are better.

    Especially the punch line.

  3. rj42 says:

    oooh, I want to play. Since I use gmail I rarely get any spam, but I peaked inside my spam folder and lo and behold, almost 1 out of ever 10 messages contained one of the following headlines:

    Turn your small knob into a huge meat stick!

    Our effective remedy will bring you true male power in 2008!

    Indulge yourself in the feeling of real masculinity in a year to come!

    A perfect Christmas gift for your woman would be your bigger dik!

    You will be able to penetrate deeper

    With your new big rod you will easily spend 365 hot nights in a new year!

    Elongate your short sword to fit her scabbard better!

    Show that you’re a real man deserving a real phallus!

    Don’t envy well-hung guys! You can easily become one of them!

    Girls don’t like to get laid by baby dic’ks…

  4. With your new big rod you will easily spend 365 hot nights in a new year!

    You’ll need to take Feb. 29 off.

  5. I’m the exchange admin at my place. Previous management had monstrous issues with smtp relaying and the spammers pretty much overran the server and directory.

    Through arduous efforts and self-education, combined with a delicate balance of several server side spam solutions, I have things down to a dull roar; however, this has come at a cost of tri-weekly pulling and releasing false-positives from the IMF filter. It’s the lesser of the two evils.

    The sheer volume of viagra emails, from the badly-phrased, bad pidgin english and sheer enthusiasm for preying on male sexual esteem has probably scarred me for life.

    Yet, on occasion, these make really, really giggle.

    PS: I also have early indicators that the pocket —– simulator (use your imagination) is making a marketing comeback. Get yours early!

  6. BillyB says:

    The best one I’ve recently got was: “asdw yourdsfPenis is BELOWaqweAVERAGE” 🙂