A spammer in the works

Okay, now I know that I've moved to China.

First the government goes around blocking websites and wants me to show id at cybercafes. Now I'm getting Chinese spam.

No, seriously, for the last three days, all the mail in my Gmail spam folder has been in Chinese. Is this happening to anyone else? I'm starting to get a little worried here. There's something about the idea that one billion people out there might want me to buy cheaper prescription medication that makes me very afraid.

Not that I know what the mails say, of course. (For a script based on symbols, it's suprisingly hard to figure out the words for 'penis enlargement' in Mandarin) For all I know there is some desperate political dissident out there sending me top-secret military information at the risk of his / her life, and I just keep deleting it. Or, even more critically, it could be the recipe for the perfect egg salad.

***

As I've grown older, the spam I get has matured with me. At first, all I would get were mails promising to restore my virility. Then at some point those stopped coming and I started getting offers for mortgages and credit instead. Now all I seem to get are offers for cheaper prescription medication.

Do these spammers know something that I don't? Does the fact that I never get ads for viagra substitutes any more mean that even the spam community has figured out that I'm never going to get a date again?

I don't know what I resent most - the implication that I'm a sex-crazed maniac with really tiny equipment, the insinuation that I'm a financial deadbeat with a two digit credit rating and no conceivable hope of ever finding employment, or the suggestion that I'm a geriatric old man who's way past the point where he has to worry about either of the other two. [1]

***

And speaking of spam in Gmail, have you ever noticed how when you go to the spam folder you always get these links to food products made out of spam (my folder currently shows a link to a recipe for Spam Primavera)? Shouldn't someone have figured out by now that when people click on this folder they're talking about a different kind of spam[2]? Somewhere in outer Elbonia there are a bunch of marketing executives trying to figure out why nobody will buy their spam burgers, despite the fact that their ad gets 156,230,492 views a day.

Notes

[1] Needless to say, none of those are true.

[2] Alternatively, of course, there may be people who actually are so fond of eating spam that they have a seperate folder for it. I'm sure they must be wondering why people keep sending them all these messages for penile implants. We don't want a bigger c*ck, they probably reply, we like our meat canned and pre-cooked, thanks.