Terry Jones

How to tell when the public mood has changed on an issue? The subject of your spam mail might be a good indicator. Spammers are constantly testing the collective mood, twisting and turning, using any method they can dream up to get our attention and open their email. The main tool for this, having negotiated our spam filters, is the mail Subject line. When you see Viagra or penis enlargment, you know it must be working at a rate that keeps them going – if not on you then on others. Yes, it’s cheap to send spam, but they’re doing it for money. It’s in the interest of the spammers that their methods are successful because then they have happy customers who give them more business.

I write all this because I’ve noticed that i’ve started getting spam with subjects that quietly question the US presence in Iraq:

  Ellen Hammond         Oct 26 04:37 manage troop levels.
  Wiley King            Oct 26 04:49 how Iraq affects American security
  Veronica Ochoa        Oct 26 04:41 the United States
  Harris Bradshaw       Oct 26 04:39 troops home tomorrow
  Bob Jernigan          Oct 26 04:43 a reason to call for

I’m wondering if this might not be a sure sign that public mood has indeed swung.

You might claim that polls could tell you the same thing. But I’m not so sure. Large numbers of people have disagreed with the US Iraq fiasco for a long time. But it’s easy to say “oh yes, disgraceful” to a poll taker over the phone. It’s more of an acid test if the issue can induce you to open an unknown email, perhaps even to buy something.

Spammers are not dumb. A huge amount of effort and ingenuity goes into getting people to open spam mail. I think it would be fun to track spam titles as a measure of social issues. Of course I never will, I’ll just post this. On a small scale I think this example is interesting. Has public opninion really changed in a tangible way on Iraq, and is this made clear by the move to use the issue as the subject of spam a better indicator of it than other things?

This reminds me of Chomsky’s claim (paraphrased) that general opinion on political issues doesn’t affect things much. Things don’t change until the business community collectively realizes that the policy is bad for the bottom line, at which point things change rapidly.

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