Legal Research

?Insulting spam messages?really vitriolic ones!?

By emma wood

Dinosaur Comics over at Quantz.com has been really good lately. This one struck a chord, though, because I noticed the same thing a little while ago. Now that we’re completely desensitized to the usual ultra-explicit subject lines in spam, spammers are getting personal.

I’ve probably gotten one with the subject line “What a Stupid Face You Have, [my name here]” several dozen times. And strangely enough, I feel a barb of hurt (or at least, offence) every time, no matter that I’ve seen it before.

I’m relieved that T-Rex (er, Ryan North) and I aren’t the only ones who’ve had this experience. It was widespread enough for the New York Times Bits Blog to post about it back in June (see “What’s behind the stupid face spam scourge?“).

The experts explain:

“It makes the mail personal, because it is a direct insult using the recipient?s name.?

?Is it successful? It?s successful enough for them to keep trying it.”

Ugh. I haven’t had one of these in a while. But no doubt they’ll replace it with something worse–it’s only a matter of time.

Full post as published by Ballad in Plain E on August 15, 2008 (boomark / email).