Why on earth am I getting nonsensical spam mail?! I'm fed up, but also slightly bewlidered by the most recent, almost-poetic spam. What does it mean? Here it is:
building sir their fallen, north last listened piece twice fool it gentlemen
bound. find party half just plain struck eat?
tight bound dear with poor? horse whatever it mans point hurry as days lord
said.
north turned thought front calling touched safety already longer. watch dare sit
worth problem.
hot taught great natural than fine wonder. dirty hour surely fact. occurrence
peculiar toward perfectly physical, straight mine approach close fell off doing.
hopping gotten died sister power to though loose,
otherwise grew bicycle supper air fathers america thoughts between have. usual
south answered arctic rising handwriting past bread boy convenient, playing can
times success power" eight hair its central summer oclock bad food interest,
became jealous society probably monday up?
Or did some dissociative person write it? Are they pleading for help? Then again, their email had the word TRAP in it. I blocked 'em.
The thing is, spammers have started using this randomly generated poetry as an attempt to fool spam filters. There are certain words and combination of words that most Bayesian filters will learn to recognize as being actual email. So if spammers use these key phrases - many of which are easily produced with random phrase generators - they're assured of getting their spam through at a higher rate. Obviously, this one worked with you.
I think it's interesting that the difference between real poetry and random, machine generated poetry is pretty subtle.
Posted by: ryan at October 25, 2004 12:09 PMthanks for the comments on my site. fun fun!
man this poem moves me. moves me from the heart of my bottom.
But Ryan, what good can somebody possibly get out of sending me randomly-generated, almost-poetic spam? I mean, did they earn some money when I opened it or something? Grrr.
I thinik you're right to be interested in the subtlety between "real" and "un-real" poetry. I would like to think that the difference between man-generated and machine-generated things would be much more flattering, but it often isn't. Think of chess programs no one can beat. Or mass-produced parts that exceed hand-made ones in every aspect.
Posted by: bob at October 25, 2004 03:41 PMPretty subtle? Perhaps structurally, but then again, these things don't bear any content. I'd like to think poetry does.
Posted by: Evan Donovan at October 26, 2004 02:22 AM