Spam: canary in the cultural coal mine

If there is such a thing as an evil geek, spammers surely qualify, clogging up our email boxes and wasting our time. But if there’s one thing spam may be useful for, it’s gauging our anxieties on a cultural level. Vying for dominion of my in-box these days with the Cialis and Viagra pitches are unsolicited emails with subject lines like these:

Rates Hit 40 Year lows
Rates are Rising - Lock in yours Today
Rates are rising lock in today 30 sec app
Refinance home loans
Bills to pay? Get the funds you need...
Overnight Account Transfer
Are you tired of debts?
Get the funds you need, Quick payday deposit by tomorrow
Astounding Loans hassle free

What does it all mean? That more people are worried about money than they are about their limp dicks... which is a relatively new development: these money-woe spams weren’t coming in a such deluge even six months ago.

I mentioned in my review of Land of the Dead the feeling that something huge and bad is barreling toward us. If spammers do what they do because it works, because people respond to these pitches, does the new desperate tenor of the spammers offer a hint that our crappy economy is about to collapse? (Like how econo-geek Jim Kunstler is trying to tell us at his brilliant blog Clusterfuck Nation?)

We Xers need to worry about this because, as with the zombie apocalypse, we’re gonna be the ones left cleaning up the mess.