One has to wonder whether the spam one receives tells one anything about the current social or economic climate. Two hundred years from now, will professors be showing graphs that tell students what bygone cultures were like, based on their spam content? (It reminds me of David MacCauley’s wonderful book, Motel of the Mysteries, in which an archaeologist from the future unearths a motel and draws hilarious conclusions about our culture from its artifacts.)
If anyone were to go by my inbox and junk folder, it would become apparent that, even in the deep recession of 2009, people are still concerned about the following:
- the size of their penises
- the size of their bodies
- not having the correct timepiece
Other concerns come and go, apparently with the seasons—I’m currently being offered giant tomato and blueberry plants—but the need for a smaller waistline, a larger penis, and a wonderful watch apparently endure.
I understand the first two, which in one way or another are both about sex; the need for sex endures wars, recessions, depressions, natural disasters, and just about everything else humanity and the world can throw at us.
But watches? When was the last time you found yourself longing for a great watch? In an age where most people don’t even bother with timepieces strapped to their wrists—they all have super-accurate ones in their hands or glued to their ears—it’s an interesting commentary that a) someone out there really believes that hordes of people will respond to unsolicited emails about watches and b) hordes of people apparently do, because otherwise the spammers wouldn’t keep sending this stuff out.
Since it seems that getting a handle on dealing with spam is very much a thing of the future, you might as well get what amusement you can from the stuff as you press the delete key and wonder what our spam says about us. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
