Oct 07, 2003 13:10
I remember when spam used to make sense. (Okay, I can remember when it
didn't freakin' exist, but that aside .... )
You know -- when someone would send me mail telling me that with their
amazing product, I could increase my ejaculation volume, I knew what was
up with that. I understood, to use marketing jargon here, what the
value proposition was, as it were. They had a product, they
figured I might have money, and by letting me know about it, they thought
that, perhaps, the next time I felt the urge to be able to top off large
beer steins with my own semen, I might think of them and their product.
Fair enough. With you so far.
But lately, I've been getting spam from fucking Neptune, as near as
I can figure. The subject lines are innocuous enough, something like
"Important Information," and when I'm bored enough, I'll sit here and
think, "Oh, look, this Information is Important! I had best read it at
once!" So I open it up, and instead of telling me how I can increase my
breast size by opening my bank account to an important official in
Nigeria, there's totally random noise. Words pulled at random out
of the dictionary. Or strings of letters in no human language.
What the hell is going on here? I understand that they're trying to get
past Bayesian filtering, okay, fine, but -- I see your windup, but where's
the pitch? What are you trying to sell me? Have I just forgotten how to
read? What?
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