12.02.03
A spammer by any other name
Are spammers’ names getting more outré?
This morning I had offers of genuine prescribed medication from, amongst others, Demetrius Column, Arnulfo Mcleod and the titanically monickered Inflorescence B. Afghan.
Either there are some very bored people being forced to come up with an ever-increasing number of names or this is an escalation of the spammer-punter arms race. This arms race is based on grabbing the punter’s attention. Arguably this means grabbing attention by whatever means necessary, even if this draws attention to the fact that this is spam. You see it in subject headers too. I had one this morning titled “parenthesis maid spinal”.
The only alternative that I can imagine is that these are being sent by the sorry tail end of the once great clans of the French surrealists.
I imagine Duchamp’s grandson, struggling now to maintain the crumbling pile into which he was born, one wing of which is now entirely closed off for repairs that will never happen. All over the house heaps of grandfather’s eccentric constructions fight for floorspace with heaps of accumulated tat. That pile of damp mattresses was probably one of his, but now nobody’s quite sure. Their spring has sprung long since. The famous urinals are now pressed into service as urinals. Duchamp III is forced into hawking the familial talent for a meagre living, handcrafting and sending up to a thousand gibberish emails a day, each one uniquely absurd. “Sati fa tion gua teed!”, he types furiously, “yygd mryu”.
He knows that he is the last standard bearer of a lost movement. Magritte’s grandson has been doing cigarette advertising for years. Any surviving Dalis are fully engaged in setting editorial policy for British tabloids. This week he heard that Man Ray’s son — Boy Ray — breathed his last in a Parisian garret (which he insisted to the last was a railway carriage shaped like a woman’s behind).
Only the callow Duchamp, the end of his line, relentlessly sends out his incomplete messages into the vague night of the web, refusing to surrender his final nub of hope that some unknown Dadaist will pick one up, add to it, and send it on again, in memory of the great games of consequences once played in Paris.
mad musings of me said,
December 3, 2003 at 11:12 pm
After they were famous…
Jon tells us how the tail-end of the French surrealists are currently occupied….
Transblawg said,
December 4, 2003 at 2:20 pm
Spammers’ names
rogue semiotics had a post commenting on the weird names used by spammers: This morning I had offers of genuine prescribed medication from, amongst others, Demetrius Column, Arnulfo Mcleod and the titanically monickered Inflorescence B. Afghan. Jon spe…
Yoz Grahame's Cheerleader said,
December 10, 2003 at 9:24 pm
Nature ramble: Crap - 5t
(The first nature ramble was billed as “first of an occasional series”. Apparently, “occasional” means “annual, and the first one was better”) I dropped in on the recently-reanimated river of møøse and scorn 2lmc today to tell them, in th…
Yoz Grahame's Cheerleader said,
December 10, 2003 at 9:33 pm
Nature ramble: Crap - 5t
(The first nature ramble was billed as “first of an occasional series”. Apparently, “occasional” means “annual, and the first one was better”) I dropped in on the recently-reanimated river of møøse and scorn 2lmc today to tell them, in th…
Yoz Grahame's Cheerleader said,
January 19, 2004 at 12:48 pm
Nature ramble: Crap - 5t
(The first nature ramble was billed as “first of an occasional series”. Apparently, “occasional” means “annual, and the first one was better”) I dropped in on the recently-reanimated river of møøse and scorn 2lmc today to tell them, in th…
reparacion ordenadores said,
February 13, 2005 at 11:46 am
Three rules for the spam game:
1) you can not win.
2) you can not draw.
3) you can not leave the play.
Greetings,
Antonio, from Malaga (Spain)
Rogue Semiotics » It’s quiet, too quiet said,
October 17, 2005 at 8:33 am
[…] Too often, then, it’s just me spending a couple of minutes clearing up after the comment spammers. Even they seem to have recognised that something has changed. Where in the past this place would often be bombarded until it was throbbing with frankly eye-opening offers of all kinds from naughty women of all persuasions, these days I seem to be attracting spam about cigars, ForEx trading (zzz) and, I ask you, flowers. Sadly, also, the surreal spam names seem to have been weeded out. Now it’s just Diether and Edward, who at least seems to have found his target well: he spams with apparently random selections from Poe’s Dupin stories, adding a welcome touch of Gothic mystery to the process of deleting rubbish. […]
MATTHEW ROSE said,
February 27, 2006 at 11:58 pm
I CAME ACROSS YOUR MUSEMENTS WHILE SEARCHING FOR A NAME FOR MY UPCOMING EXHIBITION. MY GOOD FRIEND, ROBERT WARNER, SAID HE WAS DOING A SHOW CALLED “SLEEPING WITH SCISSORS” WHICH I FOUND FRIGHTENINGLY GOOD (WE’RE BOTH PRODUCING COLLAGE WORKS AND WE BOTH CUT UP WORDS, BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS). SO I WAS HOPEFUL I COULD TOP HIS SHOW TITLE…BY USING SOME SPAM. THING IS, I REALIZE, I NEED VERB + NOUN. ANY SWELL NAMES AND/OR HELP WILL BE HANDSOMELY REWARDED! THNX. MR