Spamtastic

Back in the day, I used to really like a site called “Dave’s Daily”. It was basically a funny and bizarre news site. Today it consists of the same old, tired and recycled email forwards, mixed in with ads that are supposed to look like story links.

For example, there was one link for an agency in LA for married people who want to have affairs. I clicked it, expecting a story about it…and found myself at the sign-up page of their actual site.

In other words, it’s not in my bookmarks any more.

However, sometimes, even when they’re trying to trick you into buying something, or sending you to a spyware loaded site with the promise of ‘funny videos’…sometimes you stumble across an unintended comedy gem.

Take this for example. I found this page under a link for “Bank Manager blows the whistle”:

Expecting a story about, I dunno, a bank manager blowing the whistle, I found this awesome ‘get rich quick’ website. This is just a classic spam webpage, so lets go through it step by step, shall we?

1) The “Quick! You have to act now!” tactic.

Secrets are for sale! The courts will stop us selling these at any time! Quick, send us your credit card, power of attorney and your first born before you have time to realize what a total scam this is!

2) The totally implausible explanation.

This guy is apparently ‘sick of corporate greed’ (God forbid a business should make money)…but apparently his way of stopping this ‘greed’ is to tell as many people as possible how to make shit-loads of cash…for profit.

“I’m tired of these people making millions! Send me a few hundred dollars and I’ll show you how to make millions!”

Battling greed by appealing to everyone else’s sense of greed. Yup, I believe him, don’t you?

3) The ‘secret identity”

Of course, this guy doesn’t want anyone to know who he is. Of course he doesn’t, he’s upsetting rich and powerful people. See for yourself:

His true identity is hidden, through fear of bank retaliations! Yep, those banks are freakin’ vicious. Of course, it’s totally illogical. If everyone was making millions, where would they keep that money? Under their mattress? No. They’d put it in a freaking bank.

Secondly, what retaliations? If they’re doing something illegal, they’d just insist he was making it up. If they aren’t doing anything illegal, what’s going to happen? Would they send a team of highly-trained accountants to break his thumbs?

"I've had enough of greed! Pay me for these secrets that will let you get rich!"

Also, he didn’t do a very good job of concealing his identity, which brings us to:

4) The trust inspiring, totally genuine photo.

I lost count of the things wrong with this photo, so let me try and point as many as I can out.

He’s trying to conceal his identity, but chooses to take a time and date stamped picture of himself in his office! He doesn’t even blur his face, but covers his eyes with a black bar that covers almost nothing.

Dude, if you’ve ever worn sun-glasses in the office, you’re fucked.

5) Promises based on ignorance.

Well, rich people stay rich because they have huge stock portfolios and investments, right? Obviously not, they have some dark and greedy secret!

I love these things, they provide hours of entertainment.