From: Scott Chase (osteopilus@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat 06 Aug 2005 - 16:47:09 GMT
--- Lawrence deBivort <debivort@umd5.umd.edu> wrote:
> Hi, Scott and everyone,
>
> In today's morning batch, no discernible Jewish
> names. If this continues,
> the 'Jewish spam names' pattern lasted discernibly
> about five days, starting
> as a smaller percentage of all spam names, and
> building to the high that I
> reported yesterday (thirteen of eighteen). I
> couldn't associate the names
> with any particular subset of spam subjects, and
> today the spam subjects
> seem normally distributed, as well. Only the names
> have changed.
>
> Is this significant?
>
> I think it must be, in that spam names are all
> deliberately and consciously
> invented. So WHY the intense selection of Jewish
> names?
>
> I often suggest to my students that 'the meaning of
> a communication lies in
> the effect it produces' but this is a bit of a trick
> assertion, but quite
> memetic in spirit. If we follow its implications,
> the question would be what
> 'effect' the use of such explicitly Jewish names has
> on the recipients of
> the spam. For me, spam is quite negative, and the
> author(s) may have
> thought that this is a way to get people angry at
> Jews. But for the pattern
> was so obviously artificial I had the opposite
> reaction; that this may be a
> bizarre attempt to discredit Jews.
>
> I would be very interested in hearing from others on
> the list about your
> reactions, if you have received similar spam.
>
> And it will be interesting to see if any other
> ethnicities are picked on.
>
Since my last post I noticed that "Freud" has sent me
a spam about software. I wonder if that signifies
anything or perhaps a cigar is just a cigar. There
were a couple others I wasn't sure about. Are
"Emmanuel" or "Himmelfarb" Hebrew or Yiddish names?
BTW if I were Jewish I'd like to have "berg" somewhere
in my name. IIRC that means mountain.
I do notice a lot more one name identifiers cropping
up now that you've drawn my attention to it, but since
I usually delete my junk box without looking at it, I
can't say I've done much studying of spam name
phenomena.
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