Read these definitions, do you know what word applies to both?
- irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of recipients
- trademark a canned meat product made mainly from ham
Did you guess spam?
As a child I loved a crispy fried slice of spam from the skillet, placed on soft, buttered, white bread. The heat from the meat (?) melted the butter and soaked into the bread. Now that was a good sandwich when I was seven, eight, nine, ten.
Today, I doubt I could get one bite of that sandwich down. But, this is not a post about food from my younger days. This is about the spam that collects in my email folder, titled Spam. This email fascinates and frightens me.
The fascination comes from the brief snippet my email shows. Look at this snip, I am curious about the new order from Leonard. Why does Jeremy think my images need editing.? Kaitlyn has a delivery approved for me. It must be a gift, because I didn’t order anything. I love getting gifts! Each line makes me want to open it up and see what it’s all about.
But I will never open them. I know better. I watch the Today Show with Jeff Rosen and have seen his reports on scams and viruses. But still, I am curious. I wonder, private message from Sliona? Who are you!?
Then there are the ones that make me worried. Some of these sound serious. Those words, Security Alert, make me think I need to check into this, but I don’t. Same reasons as above.
So every few days, I open up the spam file to see if someone landed there by mistake. Occasionally, I will find a blogging friend in the spam file. Not quite sure why they end up there, but that’s an easy fix by checking the Not Spam box. My eyes will look at the line given, I will be tempted, but I won’t open it. Ever.
elsie tries writing 
I don’t think I’ve ever looked in my spam box. Now I want to. Such a clever slice.
What a great post about your wonderings. I’m curious about what’s in the emails, too, but good thing you aren’t opening them!
We dipped our Spam in egg and then flour and then fried it. I liked my sandwich with ketchup. It’s been more decades than I care to count since I had Spam. I stay away from the Spam folder. I’m afraid of it and not sure that I’m as strong as you. Hope there’s no one in that folder that I need to find.
I get so annoyed at these spam messages – especially knowing they are trying to steal from me. I love to delete them. Too bad we can’t send a virus automatically back at them without hurting our computers.
Hahaha, isn’t it funny how enticing some of those spammers can be? (And, on the other hand, how ridiculously silly others are?) You can see why some people get tricked!
As for the meat, I didn’t know anyone actually ate it! I’m surprised and curious!
Every morning when I open the mail I check those that are spam and hit “delete” I have been getting more spam than actual mail lately. I am glad that the computer is smart enough to recognize most spam. As far as the other Spam – I was never a fan.
I often think of the time and energy invested in these spam emails – time that could be better spent elsewhere. Even on the automatically generated ones, someone had to set that up. Just ten years ago it would have been hard to imagine what would be consuming our time today. And twenty years ago I, too, might have been consuming SPAM.
Spam is the pest of the 21st century, but in this case everyone gets a “case of spam.” You’re wise to be cautious. I try to be but am afraid I’ll slip up one day and my life will go down a black hole. The things we worry about in this day and age….
. I have never tasted Spam. I am familiar with email spam. I have never given much thought to it. Once again you surprised me. Now I am wondering if you had a list “Things people don’t write about usually” before you started the challenge.
There is no list. These are just the weird things I notice. LOL!
As I’m sure you know, since you seem very savvy, those spammers are trying hard to entice you to open their felonious mailings. Good for you to resist. Keep it up. I like WordPress for the same reason. They delete the spammers before I ever see their notes to my blog posts. Keeps me sane. And safe.
I get thousands of these every week! I don’t open them, but I also don’t delete them; like you, I wonder whether some of them might be important. And it’s hard to resist, on this cold and rainy/snowy spring break, an email from ALL THINGS CRUISE! That is why I currently have over 15,000 in my inbox. Another project that probably won’t happen over spring break. (We ate spam too! I hated it! Thinking about it makes me gag!)
I love how you use questions in your opening. Thanks for sharing your thinking aloud.
MHG
I so enjoyed reading this! So creative.
Thanks Elisabeth, it’s been bubbling in my mind for a while.
What a lovely slice to start my morning. I love your play on “spam”. You do a wonderful job of grabbing the reader’s attention and keeping it. The addition of the screenshots was a nice addition.
Thank you Carol. I appreciate your comment on grabbing the reader’s attention. I do try. 🙂
Spam is an intriguing place to wander knowing the dangers, but looking for the pieces that slipped there by mistake.
I try not to wander too deeply into this folder.
Oh I so can relate to this. Those tag lines are so inviting, especially the security alert ones. Good to always remember that curiosity killed the cat. And I can remember my dad frying up some Spam when I was a kid. Did we really eat that?
Yes, and we liked it! Can’t imagine it now.