"Spametry" — Deep thoughts on annoying fluff

Have you noticed that the spam you've received lately gets more bizarre each day?

Recently I've received stock-touting visuals which could be a Second Life version of a Jackson Pollock painting. Nonsense stream-of-consciousness prose comes in others; words are so jumbled and packed together that my eyes strain and hurt upon first glance.

These emails exude complete confusion, and I delete them easily.

But some spam gets my attention. Here are a few examples and why they captured my imagination:

1. "High on his poop the sea-green god appears" — Made me laugh!
2. "Zip code diphtheria" — Very cool name for an early-80s punk band
3. "Call great Anchises to the genial feast" — Is Anchises some classical deity I never heard of?

Still, I delete them. Yet I've been thinking: what program have spammers been using to generate genuinely eye-catching email subject headings? It appears that this software puts words together in almost comprehensible ways.

We've trained our brains to ignore typical spammy headlines like:

a. "Viagra!!! Cialis!!! Lexapro!!!"
b. "This stock is going through the roof!!!!!!!!!!!"
c. "Llower Holme Payment by 30l percent"

But we humans have a thing for poetry, for the mysterious, for hints at the divine and the creative. This new spam oddly exploits this trait. Writers, readers, bloggers and other wordy folks — by nature — are particularly susceptible to its trickery.

Here are links to two bloggers who are attempting to create something more out of these ramblings. In essence, it is "spametry" — the crossroad of meaning, subtlety, and completely unethical marketing practices.

• Contemporary Nomad
• Spametry

But I must ask: is it poetry?

Comments

[Alexandra]

I've noticed this trend too when I look in my Akismet Spam folder, and stop to read the headlines before deleting, just for the giggle alone. Thankfully, it's still all getting shoved in the Spam folder, for now.

[KG]

Hi Alexandra — At least we're getting a giggle, right? Glad your Akismet is doing its job so efficiently.

Even though spam is a bit more witty, I'm still not buying any of those watches or penny stocks. I wonder if the spammers realize this!

[S William Shaw]

I have been getting a boat load of spam with links to Google lately. What's the deal with that?

[KG]

Steve — That's a good question — I have no idea. Anyone?

[KG]

Steve — I have a theory on the Google links spam. Perhaps Google is trying to get in on the "spametry" thing at the ground floor? Perhaps spam poetry is a trend picking up speed.

Didn't Google's stock price just go up? ;)

[Uisce]

If poetry is just "writing without rules" then since the spametry is just as rule-free as the English of the non-English-speakers who wrote the software to compose the spametry, the spametry itself is poetry. And whew, I'm out of breath! :)

[KG]

Uisce — you make an interesting point. Some of the spametry I've read certainly looks, sounds and reads like poetry.