doug wick

I’ll admit I spend a little more time rooting around in my spam filter than normal people. I’m kind of fascinated by what they are trying to sell and the games they play to try to get around the filter. This may be because I spend a lot of time on the legitimate side of direct email marketing, kind of like a legitimate, professional investor might be fascinated by the exploits of Gordon Gekko.

I also think spam might function as a cultural barometer – because the most popular spam products must be where spammers concentrate. Simple economics, right? So here is a breakdown of the last 100 spam emails I’ve received:

Anatomical “enhancement”: 27%
Illicit pharmaceuticals: 26%
Online gambling: 24%
General fleecing: 7%
Stock scams: 7%
Others: Pointless raving, international penpal requests, sketchy job offers, replica watches, easy online degrees, cheap software: 9%

Male insecurity barely eked it out against recreational drug use and games of chance. Congratulations, male insecurity! To wrap up this post, some nice poetry from one of the spam pieces:

The gleam went out, the sun sank, the
moon was gone, and evening sprang into the sky.