Deconstructing Spammers VI

The Maitre d'

Wow. It's been a long time since I've written anything.

I suppose that's because The Chef and I are in better spirits than we were when we started the site. Or even a month ago. Things are going well. Things are looking up. Life is good.

And that's bad news for you, loyal reader. (Well, OK, maybe you classify the fact that we haven't updated recently as "meh, whatever, next site" rather than "bad news.") Because truly great comedy is the product of pain and suffering. Do you think we'd have things like nerdcore rap or Dodgeball or Metalocalypse if most of the people involved hadn't been stuffed into lockers as kids? No, we wouldn't. And that's why most of Adult Swim's newer stuff has sucked: because Tim and Eric were never stuffed into lockers as children. I'm not sure how, because they're practically asking for it. But I digress.

I suppose another reason is that The Chef has gotten a job, and so doesn't have as much free time to spend on this waste of bandwidth.

OH HAI!

Also, I just haven't had any good ideas for articles recently. I was going to write a rant about this stuffed Easter bunny I saw at Wal-Mart. He was holding a stuffed Bible, and if you pressed his paw, it played "Awesome God." I was going to write a rant about how ludicrous this was, but it ended up being really excessive. After my discussion of the Interstate 35 news story, I've tried to avoid going into anything too philosophical or religious.

Also I was too afraid to take a picture of the doll with my camera phone in Walmart. I'm not sure why; it's not like the Blue-Vested Jackbooted Thugs were going to jump me.... but it's Walmart, so you never know. Somehow I did manage to get a picture of the scary, scary Elmo basket in the Easter section. I'm pretty sure it's going to make kids crap their footy pajamas come Easter morning.

Anyway, for this edition of Deconstructing Spammers, I'm skipping the whole "quote spam and respond" shtick and going for something a little classier. Or rantier, if you prefer. (Although I'm pretty sure that's not a word.) That's mainly because I haven't found any truly funny spam recently. (I did find some that made me want to reach for some eye bleach, but that's another story entirely.)

"Nominated" for a degree

Online degree scams have been around since spam first because a nuisance, but here's a new spin I keep seeing. You keep seeing these subject lines that say "you've been nominated for a PhD" or "nominations now accepted for MBAs."

"Nominations." They keep using that word. I do not think it means what they think it means.

Seriously, what do they think degrees are, the Nobel-fracking-Prize? Do universities have the ability to dole these things out hand-over-fist, but instead make you go through years of training and testing just because they're stupid meanie-heads?

I'm not sure if this is a case of people from outside the US just misunderstanding our culture, or if there are really a whole class of American citizens who think this is the way things operate. The latter would be sad, but not surprising.

And yes, I know I shouldn't expect logic from spam.

Replica Watches

I'm not sure when this hit the big time, but they're everywhere now. Which is kind of funny. Gather round, kiddies, it's time for Uncle Maitre d's story time.

The website I worked on in college actually sold replica watches. Not only that, but we had a pretty good ranking for the term "replica watches," I think because there were very few other sites selling them that weren't fly-by-night. The reason our site wasn't was because the watches we sold just mimicked the design but didn't have any of the copyright-infringing trademarks like a lot of other sites did. (Except for one patented/trademarked design element on one particular brand of watch which got us a cease and desist letter, but that's another story.) The point is, "replica watches" was actually one of our strongest search terms, just because the other things we sold were actually a little more widespread online.

Man, I'm glad this onslaught of "replica watch" spam didn't hit back then. The owner didn't quite understand that spam was bad even if it wasn't male enhancement/unsecured business loans/"hi I'm a Nigerian prince" type stuff. On a couple of occasions he actually wanted me to look into some of these "get millions of email addresses!" spam emails. I never really did, and due to a number of factors, I was never forced into it. But I imagine after the first "replica watch" email hit his inbox, he instantly declared to his new web-monkey that they absolutely needed to be doing this too, or else they'd be "falling behind."

No, really. He couldn't stand to be second place to anyone, even if it meant a business strategy like ceding the high ground rather than jumping into a fight. Or, in this case, ceding the low ground.

Not to mention the search rankings. I think the internet landscape has changed quite a bit since I left, and "replica watches" is no longer the low-hanging fruit of search terms that it was back then. Man, I'm glad I'm not the guy doing the search engine rankings report for the owner on that one. I'm pretty sure I'd have had a stroke by now.

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