Too long has spam — despised, unwanted, and sometimes even cruelly outlawed spam — been relegated to the trash bins and baysian filters of our lives. Until recently I was, as you no doubt are, a person who loathed spam. Quite wrongly, I now realize, I dismissed it as mere junk without a single redeeming attribute.
My daily trips into the WordPress spam filter of this blog were a dreaded chore. I would click to enter the spam zone, figuratively if not literally holding my nose against the assault of faux comments with their links to body part enhancers, fake designer watches, and pr0n, and their texts containing — so I erroneously believed — random babbling intended to look like legitimate comment without actually saying anything.
So much did I detest this chore that — to my enduring shame — I never actually read most of the messages. Then one day last month, as I was clearing away what I mistakenly believed to be dross … I discovered poetry. And profundity.
From then on, I began to peruse these subtle offerings with my greatest attention. Now, shocked and saddened by the irrecoverable riches I discarded in the past, I seek the deep meanings within each precious spam comment.
I can no longer keep these gems to myself. The world must know. Eyes must be opened. We must cease rejecting the beauty and wisdom being placed before us each day!
Herewith I present you with the merest taste of The Poetry and Philosophy of Comment Spam. Each precious word below was taken directly, sans editing, from comments that WordPress, in its benighted ignorance, believed I should delete:
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Louis Vuitton iPhone Case starts our exploration with the cogent observation that:
Often there is confusion in what we write, a lose of what is reality and fantasy, maybe even fantasy in our own minds of the way see the world and people around us.
Often I remain confused in my mind as to whether spam commentators are speaking directly to me or calling out to the wide, uncaring world:
Oh post! You lovely temptress you! You haunting me with thoughts of my own, such a cruel girl shall I court you one more time? Please accept my great respect
Some meanings, I fear, will elude the grasp of even the most brilliant readers. Consider this prose, reminiscent of Joyce in the most inward-looking, language-twisting moments of Finnegan’s Wake:
I can’t begin telling you how excited i get around christmas y9prsmket gifts for christmas 7r5vog314 why wouldnt you keep your friends happy with good gifts 9ldcb3k0a kwanzaa
Other message callously dismissed as spam are actually poignant cris du coeur — such as this plea from Pulsatile Tinnitus:
Hi, sorry for asking this enquiry here, but I am not ableto find a contact form or something so I felt like I leave my request here. I run a blogengine blog but I am getting bigger amounts of spam. I see u use wordpress, is it undemanding to control spam with wordpress or doesn’t it make any difference? I hope you will respond to my comment or maybe send me an email with your answer if you don’t want to approve the comment.
Yet others are utterings of indeciperable joy. Apparently freed from a Dark Night of the Soul, Free survey sites exults:
I’m overjoyed to see a new update, I was going through detriment! I revel in reading your blog!!!
And then there are those hopeful messages that perhaps will remain mysterious even when probed by the greatest minds of our age or any other. Take, for example, the offering of Mr. or Ms “Fat Sluts,” which once again I quote in full:
Award Life, link again lie feature newspaper means club major wage own investment care flat title know pass desire finance branch will recently aid building bear labour carefully next cross determine end local document nearly keep economic frequently voice structure up characteristic piece famous mention carefully place leadership family them farm never should not eye soil full position derive debate mark minister secretary existence sample wood mine pub least avoid quiet argument strongly at quite student place god housing loss thanks drop appeal sample date few rely whole block
Some of these unrecognized artists and philosophers of spam, despairing at the world’s neglect of their messages, do resort occasionally to flattery (as creative souls have all too often had to do, seeking patronage). Yet even in their attempts to abase themselves before potential supporters, their words have an undeniable appeal.
Government Credit Debt praises me for daring to be an Outsider:
What I dont comprehend is how youre not even a lot more popular than you might be now. Youre just so intelligent. You know so significantly about this topic, created me consider it from so many diverse angles. Its like men and women arent interested unless it has some thing to accomplish with Lady Gaga! Your stuffs great. Continue to keep it up!
While Anon finds my blogging to be an inspiration:
I can descry that you are an crackerjack at your return! I am launching a website willingly, and your report commitment be entirely useful an eye to me.. Thanks owing all your help and wishing you all the success.
On the other hand, One Day Car Insurance, showing the confidence of a Leonardo, prefers to flatter him or herself:
i’m delightful i found this blog, i couldnt encounter ones info upon the one expose topic antecedent until. i also smuggle a situation following this if you desire toward ever pressing in a tiny bit of visitor composition as me if probable feel release on cause me know, i’m all the time express as population toward bank check out my situate. please discontinue by and farewell a comment sometime!
In a following message, One Day Car Insurance, returns to treating me as a potential patron:
thank you because of this a brilliant blog. where else could one gratify the generous of info written within of the sort one arouse full way? i have a portrayal order that i a.m. impartial since working on, as a consequence i receive be looking because of so much information.
Yet others, daring the fates, retain a Zenlike detachment, as in this offering from raw food detox diet:
Truly especially alluring stating. Love executive this particular.
weight oss diet menu (who curiously enough shares an IP address, a Zen quality, and an e.e. cummings view of his own identity with raw food detox diet) offers:
Seriously particularly fascinating spreading. Understanding executive it.
Finally, in a philosophical pondering that needs no interpretation from me, Medicare Supplemental muses:
To be a qualified benign existence is to from a amiable of openness over the far-out, one capability into trusteeship undeterminable things further your confess control, because canful trick you toward be shattered within actual outstanding circumstances because of which you were not into blame. that says something uncommonly heavy regarding the comprehend of the upright compulsion: so it is based upon a article of faith within the spasmodic as a result on a willingness toward be exposed; it’s based on being often enjoy a store than such as a treasure, anything equitably dainty, but whose insignificant element beauty is indivisible from that fragility.
(And I must say that, while I don’t fully understand, I inherently empathize with what I believe to be the profound existential principle expressed here.)
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And this — all this poetry, philosophy, and pure unbridled passion — we dismiss as mere spam. Shame upon us for our blunted artistic sensibilities. We truly live in a decadent and degraded age.
I was really hoping you were going to extol the virtues of the canned meat product SPAM. Oh well. I do appreciate the selections from the spam filter though, thanks!
You get all the good spam. All I ever get in my inbox is overpriced enhancements (And since when is $2.31 per pill ever a good deal on the blue stuff? Crazy.) and the occasional Nigerian royalty….
I think the “I’m the widow of the late minister of finance…” (and similar) letters are very creative. They make me laugh, but I wonder how anyone could fall for them. I think of them as entertaining fiction.
Oh, and I also smile at the thought of the feds having to sift through all the spam in order to read the emails they want to read.
Kent,
“Oh, and I also smile at the thought of the feds having to sift through all the spam in order to read the emails they want to read.”
Hadn’t thought of that. But as one of this morning’s spammers wrote, “I agree with many of anything you talked about.” 🙂
Positively agree with that which you claimed. Your current proof had been terrific favored to learn. I tell you, I more commonly get irked when other people consider factors that they simply are not aware about. You were able to hit the nail directly on the head and so outlined out every while not side effect. , people can take a signal. Will likely be back to get more. Thanks
(NOTE from Claire. I simply had to approve this one (after removing the links) just because it’s so right for today …)
I’m jealous… Most of my spam is completely unreadable because it’s in a foreign language or those little box symbols. Unfortunately, I must look at them briefly each morning to sift out the few messages that were included by mistake.
But I see quite a few posts like these on the message boards I help moderate. Some of them can be very entertaining. 🙂
You do realize your examples are created by randomly assembling sentences? The purpose is to bypass the baysian filters based on word counts.
LOL, parabarbarian. I knew they were either that or some form of Chinglish. But does it matter? In an era when people make art out of urine and feces, anything can be “art.” Right?
And don’t jump on me; I don’t really believe that. The whole post is strictly for laughs — and to keep me from totally hating that daily trip into the spam filter.
Maybe Weird Al Yankovic needs to update his “Spam” song.
Ahhhhhh Claire
Methinks you have OD’d on dried Apricots
or
you have entirely tooooooo much free time on your hands
or
you were REALLY desperate for a subject today
My guess is toooooooooooo many Apricots
Well, MS Jordan … it’s true that lately I’ve had more-than-ample opportunity to OD on dried apricots.
But of course it wasn’t my fault. People just … well, they plied me with them. I couldn’t refuse, could I? “Just say NO”? To California dried apricots???
Seriously, though, I’ve actually been saving up to do that post for weeks. Got tired of too much doom and gloom. But it’s out of my systerm now …
OH NO, now it’s here too !
It’s EVERYWHERE ! There’s no escaping tha spam !
One of my email accounts has natureGIRL a part of the address, that gets the MOST male enhancement spam out of all of them – !
I’m with Matt, I was hoping for an ode to Spam the wonderful canned meat product!
I loved this post, Claire, but you may have to do a post on Spam, the wonder meat, to even the karmic balance.
Y’know, I must admit that the entire time I worked on that post (and it actually was weeks), I never once thought of The Dreaded Meatlike Product. Given the preparedness proclivities hereabouts, that’s a strange omission on my part.
I’m tempted to write a one-word Spam “appreciation” that would go something like this: gackkkkyrrrrryuchgakkkkptooey!
But Spam does have the great TEOTWAWKI virtue of lasting darned near forever (even after opening, I shudderingly suspect) and I remember how I used to love it when I was a kid — fried to cardboard consistency and slathered in ketchup. AND … it so happens that when I moved up here from the desert, I accidentally carried with me a bag containing two cans of the stuff belonging to my formerly fellow desert hermit, Joel. (Well, to be strictly accurate, those two cans contain a no-brand Spamlike product — which is even a scarier thought. But still, can fake Spam be any stranger than actual Spam?)
So, since I couldn’t bring myself to throw out or give away those two cans, and since it would have cost more than they were worth to mail them back to Joel — perhaps the Muses are telling me I should open them and … OMG … eat and write about the experience of eating their contents.
Claire, you’ve just had the FIRST EVER Freedomnista Beatnik Blog Post! (snaps fingers rapidly!)
Chris D. — Hey, that’s cool, Daddy-o. You must be one hep cat. 🙂