2002-10-01 16:51:33+00 by Dan Lyke 12 comments
I've noticed a huge upswing in the amount of violent porn spam I'm getting. I can't imagine that after this many years of porn on the net the number of folks with rape fantasies is spiking like that. Is someone from the vast right wing conspiracy trying to equate porn with violence in the public mind?
[ related topics: Sexual Culture Spam Conspiracy ]
comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment made: 2002-10-01 17:16:59+00 by: Dan Lyke
Boy, mention that and all of a sudden notice that reverse cowgirl and Daze Reader both link to Julia Scheeres' article in Wired titled Porn Spam: It's Getting Raunchier.
#Comment made: 2002-10-01 17:45:31+00 by: meuon
And they tell me I am paranoid. Geez Dan.
And.. in specific market segments, rape is a popular play theme. I can see some of the allure in it as a fantasy, but my minimal exposure to real rape (especially the victims) puts it out of what I would think of as a mutually fun theme. Some of the aspects of rape: bondage, Dom/sub, are fun on their own, but the assault/rape part is not.
Unfortunately, if you are seeing a lot of this spam (and we are also), then we also know someone is going to those sites and they are making money. That is a sad trend.
#Comment made: 2002-10-01 18:23:01+00 by: Jerry Kindall
I've actually seen a decline in rape spam over the past few months. Used to get it all the time, hardly ever see it anymore.
#Comment made: 2002-10-01 20:46:47+00 by: Shawn
What do you mean trying to? Sex (and by extension, Porn) is equated with violence - repeatedly - in our public culture. Every headline and/or story mentions the two in the same breath. We're never trying to reduce the amount of violence on TV, or the amount of sex - it's always the amount of sex and violence. And I've known several people throughout my life (my mother being one) who subscribes to the philosophy that porn is de-facto violence against women.
mention that and all of a sudden notice
Actually, I think Daze linked first - or somebody did. I remember seeing a reference to that article a few days back.
#Comment made: 2002-10-01 20:50:04+00 by: Pete
You read your spam?
#Comment made: 2002-10-01 21:38:17+00 by: Dan Lyke
Daze probably did link first, I've been slow on my daily reading recently.
The reason I said "trying to" is it seems like we're making progress and losing that association. I wonder if someone's trying to do a meta readjustment.
#Comment made: 2002-10-01 21:55:11+00 by: Dan Lyke
Pete, just porn.
#Comment made: 2002-10-02 00:10:10+00 by: meuon
Jerry, maybe your ISP has good filtering (our normal users don't see a lot of this because of SpamAssassin), but there is a LOT of it hitting us every day. Dan, I like your meta-readjustment theory, but I'll bet it's just greedy porn dudes that found something that stands out over the normal cheerleader and swedish massage school student scenerios.
#Comment made: 2002-10-02 00:40:28+00 by: other_todd
I don't get a lot of the rape spam. I get mostly the underage stuff, which frankly is a lot more problematic on many levels - not only do I not like seeing it, I don't like being on someone's list to receive it. (With the government's current attitudes, I keep waiting for them to come after me for daring to read the mail in my inbox.)
No, my surfing habits have not done anything I know of to make me more prone to get this type of solicitation. In fact I surf just about every type of porn site there is (usually wearing my sex writer hat, most of it doesn't do anything for me). But the spectrum of sites in my mailbox has definitely tended to the more extreme over the last few years. I get a huge amount of porn spam, but very little for what I would consider mainstream or vanilla smut these days.
#Comment made: 2002-10-02 13:06:38+00 by: Shawn
it seems like we're making progress and losing that association
Really? I haven't seen that at all - and I watch for it because this is a major pet peeve of mine.
#Comment made: 2002-10-02 19:17:11+00 by: Jerry Kindall
I'm my ISP so, no, I'm pretty sure I'm not getting any filterizing. (Aside from SpamSieve, which does it client-side.)
It did just occur to me, though, that the domain I sold early in 2001 included a deal to forward my e-mail to my new address. When the company that bought that domain went out of business, they stopped forwarding and my spam load dropped dramatically. I've been pretty conscientious about hiding my new address behind anti-spam barriers so it gets relatively little these days.
(Yes, I'm trying to re-register the domain I sold, I'd love to sell it for five figures a second time, but it appears the new owners renewed it for several years before they went under.)
#Comment made: 2002-10-02 19:20:59+00 by: Dan Lyke
Yeah, much of this spam is coming in on an email address that I've had since 1994 that I've never made any attempt to hide.