Men's needs
I know it's the last refuge of the scoundrel, but may I say a few words about spam? I read an excellent article on the subject of junk email in the New Yorker in August, and it put the whole subject into neat perspective. (It's available to read here.) I learned that nearly two million emails are dispatched every second, 171 billion messages a day. As Michael Specter wrote, "Most of those messages have something to sell. Even the most foolish and unsavory advertisements can earn money - in part because the economic bar for success is so low. If somebody wants to send you junk mail the old-fashioned way, through the Postal Service, he has to pay for it; the more he sends, the greater the expense. With electronic junk mail, the opposite is true: it costs a pittance to send a million messages - or even a billion - and recipients almost always spend more than the sender." Some good facts: In 2001, spam accounted for about 5% of traffic on the Internet; by 2004, it was over 70%. In some places, it's now up to 90%.
I usually get around 100 in my junk inbox between when I leave my office at 6pm and log on again the next morning at around 9am (that's when the bulk of it comes, obviously, as it's not coming from the UK, is it?) - I only go through it because certain emails I actually want slip through the net, and I have to check. You get used to deleting spam - don't recognise the name of the sender, it's in Chinese, it's an image of a woman with no top on, the subject line includes the words "penis" or "dick" subtly disguised to sidestep filters ("d!ck" or "dik" or "pen/is"). In among the endless ads for replica watches and stock options, I find the ads for penis enlargement devices/potions insultingly crude on the whole, as I whizz past them at record speed, and it does offend the prude in me that topless women can appear in my inbox uninvited. You probably get exactly the same spam as I do. It's like a plague. That said, beyond transient offence, they do no actual harm, and should I ever actually want some herbal Viagra, I know where to get it.
Of late though, I've been collecting some of the charming subject lines for penile dysfunction aids, which, one must assume, are designed to attract potential customers. I think they tell us something worrying about male sexuality in the 21st century. Here are some that recur currently:
[Warning! Some of the following are quite explicity rude]
Enter the New Year with a bigger pen!s!
Make your willy bigger and harder in just a few weeks!
Kindle a passion in her heart with your magic stick
Re:You wondered how to obtain true masculinity. Here is the answer:
The volume of your male meat is absolutely essential!
Beat her womb with your new big rod, so that she knew who wears the pants!
does she like cum in her face? bust out massive amounts of semen so she can slurp it up
Re:Make your tiny lace a true symbol of your power
Please your wife with a big hard shaft!
If you treat your filly as a goddess, why not become a God in her bedroom?
Have a great night with your girlfriend!
Create a furore in her bedroom on New Year!
In some ways, they're quite sweet, going on about the New Year and kindling passion and pleasing your wife or filly or girlfriend. I'm taken by the idea of someone wishing to "create a furore in her bedroom". That's just so vague isn't it? You could do that by letting a moth in. But the euphemisms for the male member do tend towards the aggressively macho - big hard shaft and male meat and new big rod and symbol of power (the one mentioning a "willy" seems a bit comical in the company of these pounding metaphors). Is it any wonder masculinity is in crisis? Pharmaceutical companies needs us to be ill, and if we're not ill, we're no good to them, and if their last lot of pills cured us of something, they need to invent something else, and quick! I'm not suggesting sexual dysfunction isn't a real problem - clearly, it can be, and with unhappy knock-on effects - but surely it's not as rife as this daily avalanche of ads subtly suggests? Why must men aspire to having a "magic stick"? Since when did we have to do conjuring tricks with it, too? And can one not "become a God" without a tape measure? By all means, "have a great night with your girlfriend" - it's a lovely idea. But might that great night not also include a nice meal, or a film? Must it hinge on the girth and consitency of a part of the body? Since 99% of these ads are aimed explicitly at heterosexual men, does this mean that homosexual men have no problems in this area? Does my Mac filter out gay spam? Or is it that gay people don't respond well to this kind of sell and there isn't much call for it? And if you were the kind of man who felt that "beating her womb" to prove your masculinity was a good idea and was prepared to click on a dodgy link and part with money to assist in that mission, wouldn't you also be exactly the kind of man who probably doesn't have a wife or girlfriend? (I often get an email advertising a realistic rubber lady's vagina, too. Now that seems well-marketed.)
All potent questions, I think. Keep your comments clean.
Labels: internet, sex, sexual dysfunction, spam
posted by Andrew Collins @ 9:00 AM
18 Comments
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Andrew at
18 Comments:
Sorry, I had to start this one again, with a new screen grab, as it went off at a tangent that was becoming unfairly insulting to a blameless individual, and people were posting under his name when it wasn't him. Christ, how quickly these things degenerate. (Do I have to stay up all night to moderate?)
Thanks to everyone who responded so positively before the comments were started afresh.
Positive vibes do work, Andrew, science is wrong on that score.
Sorry for hijacking part of the blog to moan about my job loss, but I think emotions were running high and I needed to sound off to people who aren't affected by it.
Cheers people, you really are a great bunch.
I'm off to submit my CV to an agency, hoping to get a job as one of these 'web-based cronies' I've heard so much about!
Also, I used to work with a guy who kept all his spam emails with nudey ladies pictured, so he could look at porn during office hours and have an excuse if he ever got caught. I changed his mailbox settings one day, and he never spoke to me again!
Chris
Sorry, that was me that started that one off with the very first comment, not realising it would degenerate into such mean-spirited silliness. You have to be so careful these days. You don't know what you're going to unleash.
My spam went from hundreds per day to just one or two - due to a combination of an ISP with spam filtering (BT) and using SpamSieve on my Mac to catch those that BT miss. It works well and I recommend it.
Yes, sorry to have had to remove the messages of support for Chris, but I was in a rush this morning and didn't have time to prune out individual ones about Rodney Edwards. Out of respect for him, I decided to republish the original entry, with a new pic, and none of the original comments.
I must admit, to read the warm messages of support in a regular's hour of need and see them interspersed with some pretty unforgiveable abuse at a young freelance journalist just about sums up this blog ie. mostly life-affirming, sometimes degenerative. You have to take the occasional rough with the more dominant smooth.
David, I find that the automatic BT spam filter to be highly effective (I occasionally sweep it for the odd anomaly but it's rare one gets through). It's the email account for this website that draws all the spam, and that's the stuff I have to plough through in my Mac's Junk inbox, as it's also where emails from new people ie. readers of my books etc. end up.
I just came across a title in my spam folder that made me laugh - "I just started having sex with my boyfriend but he keeps popping out" - visions of 'No there's nothing wrong, just off out for the paper.'
It's like a tearoom in here, but sometimes the tea runs out. When there's an empty urn, the locals go mental!
You may have seen my comments by now but I'll reiterate anyhow:
a.) Kudos for using a Cribs song title for the post header, AC. Are you a fan? The singer's going out with Kate Nash, apparently. For shame!
b.) Sorry to hear about your bad luck, Chris.
c.) How come I can't post as 'other' and have to use my infernal Blogger account?
Have you read Morrisey in the Guardian yet, Andrew? He exposes Tim Jonze as a snivelling little know nothing. Masterly.
Mind you, he does look like a little toad....
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jameslooker/57274408/
I thought that I was defending the posters here, who Rodney called "cretins", but agree completely that some of the abuse went over the line and apologise for my role in it.
All the best Chris, being made redundant was the best thing that happened to me. I was only 23 at the time though so that's probably of less comfort to you.
Today's spam read
"'world make your dick big day' is coming"
Can anyone give me a date? I don't want to miss out
For Chris, the redundant guy. Go contracting. Be confident about your abilities and don't compromise on rate (you are worth it). Remember, there are a vast number of f*ck-twats in IT who earn a hellova lot of money. Be positive and sell yourself at interview. The admin / tax stuff with contracting is overstated: it is straigtforward and a half-decent accountant will see you right.
I've never bothered reading the spam. You have inspired me.
The first one I opened read:
"Want that every chick you meet would tell her friends that you're a real stallion in the bed"
Ahh, bless
What on earth is a "tiny lace"?
From a piece I once started to write: (You can see why I abandoned it...)
6am: At computer before getting dressed. Downloading spam. Favourite message is from Barbecue H Welshmen.
The worst are those that use a jumble of words including "soros" or "chair sniffer" to suck you in - :)
Best wishes
Linda www.freelancewritingtips.com - Just putting this here as I keep forgetting my Google log-in - cheers.
Cheers Mitchell and Anonymous.
I'm looking at it as a new beginning, and the end of a bad few months...
I got my P.M.A. - as Bad Brains once sang.
Contracting is one thing I've been looking into actually, anonymous. I've just had to get my CV together for the first time in years first. Hassle doesn't begin to cover things!
"Make your tiny lace a true symbol of your power" - is this something to do with Kabbalah?
Chris
Yeah I know you wrote this post some time ago...I'm bored.
But: *applauds*.
Thanks for restoring my faith that there ARE nice men out there.
butterflywings.
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