This week, we have a myth com from reader Streon, who asks us:
Why do we get spam email that’s complete gibberish or random sentences from books strung together?
Streon’s question is a good one. He is careful, by the by, to differentiate between the spam e-mail that uses a block of gibberish like a shield, allowing the spamful content to slide in when we least expect it and tell the wife and children that you can have a large penis and low mortgage rates all at once. No, these are the e-mails that are nothing but sentences from books, nonsense phrases, bits of semi-comprehensible detritus and semiliterate ranting.
It is Streon’s thesis, unstated, that there must be some meaning behind these random e-mails. Some purpose.
As it works out, he’s half right.
Entirely right, I suppose, if one extends the defintion of the word “meaning,” but for the most part I don’t think that’s the right word for it. But that, as you can imagine, is a matter for the myth.
