January 27, 2004
Autumnstupid
Sometimes spam actually looks like the intent is to get under my guard and sell me something. I got one recently promising to improve my confidence and self-esteem (assuming that those are determined by one physical dimension) which came bearing the name of a blogger I read regularly. Thing is that it came to my other email address, meaning that this was probably random selection. That same blogger has noticed that spam is coming in bearing as the names of senders very strange collections of words. Her Feudalism K. Nobodies, like the Regicides P. Scrapbook who offered me the opportunity to buy discounted software, are simply not people anyone would buy software from. I don't think they are people at all.
These spam could be coming from a hive mind of net-connected computers, yours and mine perhaps, participating after being recruited by something like a virus. They could be coming from the voudon entities William Gibson foresaw, dwelling in the routers and backbone of the net. They could even be coming from beyond this Earth, and I recall the woman who passed thru my household a while ago who maintained that UFOs are demonic manifestations. The spam which Margi with a hard g got from her Mr. Nobodies contained a couple of phrases which she highlighted, phrases one might be tempted to read aloud. Don't. I implore you not to submit the odd assorted words which come as spam to a search engine, even tho I have foolishly done so myself. It may be that none that we get now have any power, or it may be that only if spoken by an electro-mechanical text to speech processor will they have any effect, but the cost of such caution is so low compared to the possible consequences that we can all feel better deleting spam without yielding to the temptation to open it.
posted Tuesday, 27 January 2004
Posted by triticale at January 27, 2004 08:05 PM