This morning’s best spam

Filed under: Spam
4 Comments

Got spam email this morning addressed to webmaster@[my domain], with subject line "IRS Fears Ron Paul?"

I figured it might be entertaining, so I opened it and read the beginning, and sure enough:

Hello Scott,

Ron Paul is for the people, unless you want your children to have human implant RFID chips, a National ID card and create a North American Union and see an economic collapse far worse than the great depression.

It went on from there.

<snark>At least if there were a National ID card they might know that my name isn't Scott.</snark>

Note to the horde of angry Ron Paul supporters who are inevitably going to descend upon this entry like a plague of locusts: I got nothing against your guy per se (no more than against other politicians of various sorts, anyway); I'm just amused by the hyperbole. Spammers like this aren't helping your cause.

4 Responses to “This morning’s best spam”

  1. Ted

    That may sound like hyperbole, but there are lots of people who actually believe that those things are in our immediate future.

    reply

  2. Jed

    Fair enough. My personal take on their likelihood: human implant RFID chips quite likely within the next ten years (though very unlikely to be mandatory for everyone in the US); national ID card pretty plausible within the next ten years (though there’s a lot of resistance to the idea); North American Union extremely unlikely within the next ten years if you mean political union, marginally but not a lot more likely if you mean economic; “economic collapse far worse than the great depression” extremely unlikely within the next ten years.

    All of those are gut feelings rather than things I can supply data about. The reason I’m mentioning my guesses about likelihoods is to note that it was those last two things that I consider extreme hyperbole, not so much the first two.

    Anyway, regardless of any of that, I certainly don’t think that spamming people with the message “If you don’t elect Ron Paul, your worst nightmares will come true!” is going to make it significantly more likely that Ron Paul will get elected President. The tone of this particular spam comes across as conspiracy-theory fringe to me, regardless of the likelihood of any particular details. It’s like sending out spam that says “If you don’t vote our guy, the Nazi stormtroopers will visit your house and eat your babies!”

    Of course, lots of that kind of fearmongering happens among the more mainstream candidates as well. If I received this kind of spam about them, I’d mock that too.

    reply

  3. Ted

    I agree that spam isn’t a good way to get people to vote, but then again I wouldn’t have thought spam was a good way to sell products, and yet some folks are apparently finding it profitable.

    My significant other recently received an e-mail from a friend of hers who was concerned after watching this YouTube video; it warns of the same things as your spam, but is much more slickly produced.

    reply

  4. Vardibidian

    Human implant RFD chips in children within ten years? Seriously? In the US?

    So, here’s the question: given that none of the likeliest candidates for President support any of those things, including the national ID (which is perfectly reasonable for at least one candidate to support), even if Dr. Paul were to be somehow elected, how would he stop them? I mean, presumably, if the whole gang of the two parties combined are in some sort of wacked-out conspiracy to implement things that both claim to oppose, then they’ll do it no matter who is President, right? And if Dr. Paul wants to, f’r’ex, put us back on the gold standard to avoid the Greater Depression, how is he going to do that over the objections of both legislative parties?

    Thanks,
    -V.

    reply

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