By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com
I remain as amused as ever by the daily contents of my inbox. A recent study has concluded that 50-80% of all email is now SPAM, and while I could easily insert an anti-spamming tirade here, please bear with me as I seek the proverbial silver lining.
Internet apocrypha, messages from and sites on the Internet of dubious authenticity, are among the most entertaining things I see on a day-to-day basis. The evolution of these messages probably precedes the fax-lore of the 70s and 80s (you know the old stories, the Red Velvet Cake recipe wrestled from the mean-spirited restaurant, the million dollar cookie recipe supposedly spread via fax and Xerox to avenge some misdeed or other). Stories like these made their way into early email chain-letters as well, and I still have people forward me stories about the cookie recipe as if it is real. That must be *some* cookie!
Newer messages often involve a government minister or third world potentate offering the recipient vast sums of money to temporarily watch over his assets while he flees his destabilized country. The entertaining part is the subtle differences between the requests ... the increasing sums of money, the improbable names of the government ministers, the amusing salutation identifying you, the recipient, as a "man of great honor and distinction well known to [mysterious unnamed people] held in common." One wonders why the mails persist, unless they are finding pay-dirt somewhere, somehow (the scam being that you have to let the potentate know all of your financial information so that he can "transfer the funds" ... which he surely would).
Other messages include the importance of cheaply had prescription drugs-principally those which enhance sexual performance and/or ward off depression. One imagines the scruffy bulk of sexually frustrated internet users weeping in despondency, awaiting the salvation of the prescient spammer.
Then there are the stock scams aimed at elevating a particular issue to the benefit of a few selected spam recipients ... a wonderful gesture from those "in the know" who are selflessly sharing the leaked information. As I re-read that last sentence, I suppose the same thing could be said of any stockbroker, though.
I'll talk about apocryphal websites sometime in the not too distant future as well - sites that discuss the real history of Victorian steam robots and how England is actually the 51st American state. Remember: it must be real, because it's on the Internet!