Sexually Explicit

Like most of the e-mail using world, I get spam. For reasons unknown to me, my Gmail account tends to get spam only of a pornographic nature and my AOL account tends to all the other types (home mortgage, "bad credit?", perscription drugs, etc.) This bifurcation caused me to take interest in a recent report issued by the Pew Internet and American Life Project regarding a survey on spam:

Among other things, the survey found that people were getting less porn spam.... While 63% of email users now say they have received porn spam, down 8 percentage points from a year ago, 29% of those email users say they are now getting less porn spam, compared to 16% who said they are getting more.

I suspect that this drop primarily reflects two things: (1) spam filters are getting better on a whole and (2) many Americans are either unaware of their spam filters or they just don't check their spam folders. I'm doubtful that this poll reflects an actual drop in porn spam.

In truth, I haven't been been checking my spam folders that often either. As I move away from AOL, whose filters are less than impressive (I'd say they get it right about two-thrids of the time), to Gmail, whose handling of my unwanted email has been nothing short of amazing, I feel less pressed to keep a carefule watch on the spam. Nearly all of my unwanted messages are automatically sorted into the spam folder, and it is unusual for legitimate messages to end up there by accident. To make life even easier Gmail automatically labels messages with pornographic content with the all capital label "SEXUALLY EXPLICIT." This makes messages that are mistakenly sorted (either spam in the inbox or good mail in the spam folder) stand out like a sore thumb.

As a result, I almost never read even the subject lines of my spam, but today I read a few when I was retrieving a message I had marked as spam by mistake. Most were of the subject lines were typical ('webcam,' 'hot,' 'co-eds,' and other such buzzwords were a dime a dozen), but one subject line really just cracked me up:

Naughty Doctor Fucks Pretty Whore In Cute Anus

As if having a subject written like a New York Times headline wasn't humorous enough, I can't but help laugh at the choice of adjectives.