Rough Theory

Theory In The Rough

Spam as Found Poetry

Maybe it’s just me, but email spam to this domain seems to be getting more poetic lately. The current day’s offerings include the intriguingly random:

“Order status, off thrown”

Some nascent political commentary:

“Your money, oil filled”

And the haiku-like:

“Very sad
German statistics say
in average”

A bit less poetic is the spam that has been getting through my existing filters, and into the published comments sections recently. I’ll spend some time over the weekend trying to minimise this problem…

And, yes, I will write something about social theory again soon… Perhaps a meditation on the theme “Habermas: very sad German statistics say in average”…

2 responses to “Spam as Found Poetry

  1. Kenneth Rufo January 14, 2007 at 5:25 pm

    Well shit, maybe we should just go ahead and do our own exhibit. I’ll do some ascii art and you can do the haiku. Btw, you familiar with Melissa Scott? Kind of a post-cyberpunk writer – brilliant, experimental – anyway, she has a book called The Jazz which is based on this idea of spam elevated to art. You’ll like it.

  2. N Pepperell January 14, 2007 at 6:16 pm

    Haiku? I’m not familiar with Melissa Scott, although I’ve seen occasional examples of spam compiled into poetry – thanks – I’ll have a look.

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