I don’t know about you but I get a good amount of spam. My email client (Thunderbird) does a good job of sifting through about 60% of it, but I still get a good daily dose of spam emails.

What eludes me about the whole concept is that someone actually has to be making money from all of this. I mean, that’s it’s intention, to help me earn a $30,000 degree for only $3k or to sell me ’10 Mining Stocks You Should Own’. Of course not all spams are purely about lucrative dealings or sales propositions. And they’re becoming increasingly clever. How it all works I haven’t a clue but obviously there are bots trolling the series of tubes constantly, and tracking user movements and interests – what might you be more likely to clickthrough?

Okay so you know that I visit a lot of art sites! (I’m talking to the bot now) Go figure! But what you’re unable yet to distinguish is what type of art sites I look at! You can’t distinguish contemporary video from classical painting! You can’t even distinguish avant-garde movements from… each other! So you sure as hell won’t be able to distinguish what I like and dislike within the phenomenally fucking huge and nearly explosive arena of ‘post-modern’ & contemporary art, where I am drawn to things, objects, works, drawings, paintings (a few), videos, interactive works, etc., that have no relation to each other!

And why did you timecode your email for the future?! The email was sent nearly three days ago but was timecoded for today at 2:51pm! Of course I knew it was false! And with a subject such as One of those young men was painter Sandro Botticelli for whom the striking Simonetta Cattaneo personified beauty and goodness., your email is destined for the junk folder! I mean, Sandro Botticelli, an Italian Renaissance painter best known for his The Birth of Venus painting? Whose subject, Venus, was modeled by the aforementioned Simonetta Cattaneo? Cmon! You really think I’m going to clickthrough that shit!

I’ll clickthrough an ad by Major League Baseball (and I do!) any day before I clickthrough an art spam about a Renaissance painter!

Yet, I admit, sometimes these spam emails can be interesting. How they’re written, automatically composing more-or-less grammatically correct sentences, or perhaps culled and compiled from lines found elsewhere on the internet, is intriguing:

The page is still readable. If not, why should its HQ automatically be in this city?
…
The usual focus is sex of course where they claim a given person was really gay.
…
Its about NOT pointlessly uprooting the people involved for no good reason.

And for some reason there were lots of references to Scotland:

It is due to close in June, when pupils move to the new Tynewater Primary School along with those from Cranston and Cousland primaries.
…
If you want a cultural centre with that on its CV, then Glasgow the place for you!
…
The campaign also won cross-party backing from MSPs and council groups. Scotland will be strong with a strong Edinburgh.

All this and plenty more in an email originally meant to titillate me over an Italian Renaissance painter. funny.

But hey, it could have been worse.