[With apologies to Lewis Furey for the title.]
Like many of you, I expect, I get a lot of unwanted commercial email, a.k.a. spam. I haven’t taken a count, but I’d say something like 80% of the email sent to me is spam these days.
Only a tiny fraction of it ever makes it to my in box, of course, because I have two levels of spam filtering in place – one at the server level and one at the client level. Over the years I have fine-tuned them so that I get few false negatives (junk that eludes the filters) and even fewer false positives (legit email pegged as junk).
Still, I have to scan the subject lines of my junk mail weed patch daily to remove the occasional flower. When doing so, it’s hard not to notice the sheer idiocy – to say nothing of hallucinatory incoherence - of most of those subject lines. Many of them are random strings of words or letters apparently designed to defeat spam filters. Others, however, are so actively obnoxious that you’d think they’d defeat the entire reason for their existence. Would anyone with two neurons to rub together really open an email with some of these titles, much less follow a link contained therein and, even more incredibly, actually buy something at that link? Apparently P.T. Barnum was right.
So here, for your dining and dancing pleasure, are my (so far) top ten least appealing spam email subjects, in the style of David Letterman. I can’t imagine who is opening these emails. I just hope he or she doesn’t live in my neighborhood. Or in my city. Or on my planet.
Top Ten Least Appealing Spam Email Subjects
10. Top Rated Australians on Sale
9. What They Don't Want You to Know What it Does to Your Body!
8. With this medicine may lead to unconsciousness or death
7. Chuck Norris is looking for you
6. Jessica Alba stares at me
5. Update your Penis
4. Quality Narcotic Support
3. Pimp my ass
2. russian roulette games
And the number one least appealing spam email subject:
Nazi Chat Room
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