Fun With Spam

Fun With Spam

Spam-folder

My family’s first new computer arrived at our home sometime early in my high school career, and with it came the modern luxuries of internet connectivity and email access. Truth be told, we did own a computer before then, an archaic IBM PC that boasted an exceptional platform for playing Frogger, a serviceable word processor, and not much else. My parents’ hand was forced in terms of acquiring an upgrade as my siblings’ and my own school projects became increasingly complex and frequent; consistently spending two hours on a Wednesday evening at the library was becoming a nuisance, and the combination of the aging PC and the believe-it-or-not-I-actually-used-this-sometimes typewriter my mom still possessed wasn’t enough to get the job done. Then a new modem, monitor, and Earthlink account arrived, and everything changed.

 

When I think back to the early days of the internet, the images I remember are a cross between high comedy and the wild west, a series of laughably out-of-date sites and applications mixed with the fact that very few people knew how to effectively, and optimally, use a new tool that has since become omnipresent in our society. Searching for things on altavista, visiting geocities websites, going upstairs to have a snack while the dial-up tones took their sweet time bringing up the home page – those were the days. Similarly hilarious-in-retrospect interactions took place when it came to adjusting to the new electronic mailing system as well, whether it was thoroughly reading messages from the prince of Nigeria as a means of understanding how to earn a commission by helping him with a wire transfer, or following instructions to forward ridiculous chain letters saturated with virus-inducing links. These anecdotes are funny now, and serve as a testament to how far we’ve all come since then. Well, I take that back. Maybe not quite all of us, as I learned from an office conversation with a forty-something (NOT THAT OLD!) colleague last summer.

 

Computer voice: You’ve got mail.

Me: I’m sorry…what just happened?

Coworker: Oh, it’s the AOL login sound.

Me: Right, I realized that; I guess I just didn’t think anyone used it anymore.

Coworker: Yeah, my husband and I were thinking about getting a different email account. Do you know of any?

Me: I mean…there’s a lot of them. Most people I know use either Gmail or Yahoo.

Coworker: Do they cost anything?

Me: No, they’re all free.

Coworker: Okay. Because my husband is familiar with AOL so he doesn’t really want to change, but I’ve been telling him we should get an email address we don’t have to pay for.

Me: Wait. You still pay for your email account? Is that even legal?

 

But I digress.

 

Like most people in 2013, I now possess an email account that pre-filters any messages that appear to be harmful. And like most people, I don’t pay an ounce of attention to this spam folder. I sign in, notice a number that isn’t zero next to “Spam”, and send everything to the trash without a second thought. Recently, however, I happened to glance at the sender of one of these messages just moments before it was banished into internet limbo and realized that it was, in fact, a real email that I was actually meant to receive, one that had tumbled down the wrong chute in the electronic mailroom. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world if I hadn’t caught this [extremely minor] error, but it made me wonder what other potentially-important communication – or more realistically, internet weirdness – I might have been missing. So I decided to hold off on the purging and let the spam folder hit 100 in an attempt to see if anything of interest had been falling through the cracks all this time.

 

Did I discover anything worthwhile? In short: no. Some highlights:

 

  • Adriana really, really wants to meet up, which is a little weird because I don’t think I know anyone named Adriana. Maybe we went to school together? I can’t remember. Her messages started out subtly – “Want to hang out this week?”; “Take a look at my pics online”; “What are you doing this holiday weekend?” – but started to get a little bit more pushy – “Let’s hook up online!”; “Let’s Do Sexy Chat!”. What happened to catching up and seeing what my plans were? I don’t think I’ll be giving Adriana a call.

  • Agent John Edward of the FBI FIELD INTELLIGENCE UNIT (his caps, not mine), has some information he needs to share with me, but he needs some information from me first. I’m all about sharing knowledge, but do I really have to fly out to DC for this to occur, Agent Edward? Isn’t that kind of the point of email?

  • KFC apparently values my opinion greatly, as evidenced by the volume of their survey requests. Although it appears they may have given up and passed the torch to Burger King later in the week. I’m holding out for In-N-Out.

  • I have managed to accrue a large number of coins at MULTIPLE online casinos without even working at it. I imagine this must be how the stock market works. Dividends!

  • Beachbody is trying to sell me things. I actually think these messages were “supposed to” make it through since I ended up on their mailing list after applying for (and receiving!) my free Insanity tee-shirt, but I think I’ll just let the mailroom robots continue to act otherwise. DELETE.

  • Mr. Hashim Uddin Ahmed has a $28,500,000 business proposal, and Mr. William Emmanuel Cotonou of the Republique du Benin is awaiting my urgent reply on a similar matter. I should really put them in touch with each other…

  • From ‘Female Seduction Secrets’: “Congratulations! You Have Been Selected! This video gives you the keys to the ‘desire center’ of any woman’s mind.”

Wait, wait, wait – the keys to a woman’s mind? All right, now I know this folder is bullshit.

Andrew Rose

About Andrew Rose

Andrew Rose is a writer and editor for Rookerville. He also manages a travel blog for his friends and family. His book, “Seizure Salad”, is a work of fiction - not in that it is a tale of fantasy, but in that it does not actually exist.

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