Spam seems to be as susceptible to fashion as anything else. I don't get as many offers to increase the size of either my tits or my pecker as I used to, and instead receive a great many opportunities to purchase knockoffs of expensive watches (my cellphone tells me the time, thanks), as well as requests to upgrade my copy of Outlook with malware (I don't use Outlook -- someday I'll resign myself to the fact that no one is still supporting Eudora and have to switch to something else, but possibly I'll wait for Google Wave.)
But this has made me wonder what happened to the viral memes of yesteryear. Like chain letters. How come they haven't mutated into the Web 2.0 world?
Like, say, this:
"This email chain brings good luck to all who pass it on, and the reverse to those who don't! Do your friends a favor, and forward it to as many as you know. Remember to include 'robot@mychaintracker.com' as a recipient!
"Zouari M. of Hackensack, NJ failed to pass on the chain, and is now being held as an enemy combatant by the CIA at an undisclosed location in a secret prison outside the United States, where he has been waterboarded more than 200 times!
"But Roland B. of Centralia, IL passed it on to more than 30 friends, and now serves as a United States Senator!
"Simply hit 'forward' in your email software, and enter the names of 10 or more friends. When the email is received by our server at robot@mychaintracker.com, it will scan the email for your address, and the addresses of those you forward to! You will receive 1 'leaderboard point' for each NEW email address (one no one else has yet forwarded this email to), and each time those friends forward the email, you will receive 1/2 point for each new person they forward it to! And so on and so on, so if someone three levels down the chain forwards it to 8 new people, you will gain 1/8 times 8 equals another point! To check how many points you have earned and thus how 'lucky' you have become, simply visit www.mychaintracker.com and search on your email address!
"Let all your friends know about this new and exciting way to get lucky! Perhaps you too can one day be a United States Senator!"
And of course that way I could build a very nice, and large, database of highly gullible people, which should be worth something to, you know, people who want to reach the gullible.
