Basement Archaeology

In case anybody’s actually noticed, today marks the second year of this blog’s existence.

As a proper blog, that is — and on blogger.com, to be more specific.

And what we have noticed over the past two years is an interesting shift in web browser usage.

Sure, IE still rules the roost, with Firefox picking up a good quarter of the slack. Opera, Safari, and Chrome are trailing behind but it’s a pack of non-computer-based browsers that are making inroads as of late. Nokia and Symbian are two new “operating systems” looming on the horizon, and the Wii and PS3 are making up nearly a full percent of gadgetry used to browse the interwebs with, as these (capped) statistics show:

Another interesting trend can be seen in everyone’s favourite internet disease: spam!

The monkeys are constantly adjusting the “topic” of the crap they (are paid to) spew, preying on our very curiosity and fascination with the weird and sensationalist, using topics such as “Tourist raped painting”, “Al Pacino peed publically”, “Jolie got on tape”, “Hideous KFC employees’ bet”, and “I was there, filming his death” — which speak volumes about what real people like you and me send to our own friends and colleagues in the normal course of a business day.

There’s little doubt that our Chinese and Russian spammers and Nigerian con-artist mugus are equally adept at observing web trends, adjusting their strategies in tune with current news and interests. Soon, you can expect email from Susan Boyle or Rihanna trying to coax you to visit their web sites in Hong Kong from where they gladly accept PayPal in return for little blue pills, enticing you with not song but such poetry as “Embrace the future of massive size”, “Be the Bigger Man”, “Women will bake you pies because of your mega size”, “The touch of your big penis will be like the touch of an angel for women”, “Your meat will be so cool women will ask for a second helping”, “If you were born in Los Angles, you better have a huge tool”, “Your school boy hook will change to the university adult hook”, and “Your large tool will be as big as a champagne bottle.”

Me kids you not; these are genuine spam subject lines.

One can only but wonder if they’re funny on purpose or if the poor grammar is intentional. If there’s one growth area (pun intended) despite the economic meltdown, it’s surely in combating spam.

Crime does pay. Except that it’s not just perpetrators who stand to gain from it.