Brian Baute

I made the mistake of checking my spam folder in Gmail. Here’s a selection of the some of the funniest subject lines, all pulled from the most recent 100 messages marked as spam. Warning: some of these are offensive, and all of them are hilarious:

• “Be the stuff of legends with a huge pole”
• “Get powerful and enlarge your pole easily today”
• “Upsize the power in your pants”
• “在整体产业链中找出最有う利模式”
• “Grow your organ larger than your arm”
• “Be the hottest man around with a large shaft”
• “Surprise your loved one with a larger organ”
• “Just 2 pills per day and you will be huge”
• “Take these medications to boost your virility”
• “Tired of being tiny, change all that today”
• “Spell binding organ growth possible”
• “Boost your ego once your size is bigger”
• “Don’t be fooled by fake meds, this is the real pole enlarger”
• “Find out how much bigger you can get”
• “Large and wide pole available for immediate gratification
• “What she REALLY wants for Christmas”
• “Sign up for organ elongation course”

Lessons learned:

1. Subtlety is a lost art. Wow.
2. Male enhancement messages are only about 25% of the spam I receive, but the funniest subject lines are always about male enhancement. Internet pharmacies, cheap jewelry, how to get a raise, and online slot machine games just aren’t as funny.
3. I get a lot of spam (almost 1500 this month), I think mostly because I’m pretty free about posting my email address online when commenting on blogs or posting on message boards. Spammers harvest email addresses from web sites, but Gmail’s spam filter does a great job so I don’t worry about it much.
4. Sending spam is cheap but not free, and it’s a business. So these messages must get a certain number of people to open them, and some of them click to the web site, and some of them make a purchase. Amazing.