I get several hundred pieces of spam each day. I don’t know the exact amount because most of it is tossed into the bit bucket by SpamAssassin, never to return. Of the few dozen that get past SpamAssassin, almost all are caught by the Bayesian filter I use. But statistical filters aren’t perfect, of course, so every few days I go through my junk folder to check for false positives.
From this experience, I know that spam subject lines can be the most bizarre, obscene, and just plain weirdest bits of English prose in the universe. This is partly due to the fact that spammers sometimes use computer programs to generate random subject lines (with unexpected results). I occasionally find myself chuckling at the wild subjects of the spam I receive.
A man named Steven Frank apparently had gone through this same experience. But instead of simply deleting the spam, he took it to the next level by creating Spamusement, a gallery of cartoons based on actual spam subject lines. He simply takes a spam subject line and brings it to life in cartoon form, usually with a hilarious twist that you’d never expect. A sample:
HELLO ME NOT DEAD
Warning: Like most spam, Spamusement is not family-oriented.
[…] After discovering Spamusement, the website of cartoons inspired by actual spam, I began to notice that some of my junk mail would make pretty good cartoons. Though I’m no artist, I thought I’d try my hand at making some “spamusement†of my own. Here’s my first attempt: […]