Clicky-Clicky: The Genius of Junk Mail

In your inbox – rather, adjacent to it – are piles and piles of ultra-compelling correspondence, calibrated to short circuit your tiny animal brain. A world of instant gratification, incredibly good luck (so many prize draws I wasn’t aware I’d entered!) and nothing less than a window into the human soul: frighteningly bleak, adorably optimistic, and surprisingly easy to please. I speak, of course, of the junk mail folder.

I don’t know how often you click on it, but I’d urge you to indulge in a scroll. Just don’t touch anything.

We like: winning, shagging, intrigue. We dislike: scary ‘official’ emails, mild health problems, being unattractive. That’s it. That’s the gamut of subjectivity, according to my spam folder; armed with the keys to our hearts, its mysterious authors riff on those themes to varying degrees of baffling specificity. As Guns N’ Roses might have sung: take me down to junk mail city, where the [jackpots] are [constant] and the girls are [preternaturally aroused]. 

Or, consider the evil genius who composed and sent this exquisite example, now affectionately known as clicky-clicky after its hyperlink. Referring to our list of Likes and Dislikes, clicky-clicky ticks almost every box; so masterful was the rhetoric, so deep was my desire to ‘stop being fat and start being [theirs]’, that I almost caved. While the mysterious writer is weaving themes no less profound than romance, insecurity and intrigue into one digital missive, it’s all in service of one result: clicky-clicky.

Operating with all the subtlety of tabloid headlines, the subject and content of a junk email scream at you to ENGAGE ENGAGE ENGAGE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD ENGAGE (and my caps aren’t even gratuitous; if anything, they’re understated). To get us to ENGAGE, these emails play on our morbid curiosity as well as our most basic drives, and the perfect specimen will combine the two – because now you mention it, how do I maintain a ROCK-HARD ERECTION for 24 HOURS? Is that something people want? Is it… medically advisable? Thank god I have a whole email promising to answer all those questions and more, if I just ‘CLICK THIS LINK’ (again, do not click the link).

As a genre of internet detritus, junk behaves much like rubbish washing up on a beach. Most of it is nothing special, but sometimes you stumble across a gem – and that goes for writers as well as readers, because these emails do (sometimes) work. The typos and eccentric grammar in so many spam emails aren’t just there because the people who write them don’t know how to spell; on the contrary, some errors are actually inserted to weed out all but the most vulnerable readers.

Basically, if you’re discerning enough to spot the errors, you’re unlikely to send card details/engage in a lengthy back and forth/buy the cure-all – and for a scammer, that’s just wasting time. As such, please direct all laughter issued henceforth at those authors rather than their victims – then again, not all junk email writers are shrewd, unscrupulous masterminds. Most of the time, there’s no need for that: really, spam is a numbers game. If you send enough people the same email, it follows that some proportion of them will resonate with its contents. 

While that’s hardly a perfect formula, it is easier to discern a method in the mailbox madness when a note pings in that seems like it could be addressing you, even if only mistakenly. I found a warning to ‘please–Quit texting..my..husband!!———————————-‘ from ‘sara nou’ hard to resist – especially because ‘sara’ had cc’d no less than 47 other email addresses, all variations on girl’s-name-random-numbers. Suspending disbelief for a second, sara should probably have a word with her husband if he’s messaging four dozen women at once.

While I’m not texting anyone’s husband (promise!) I suppose I am more likely to be doing that than seeking ways to ‘Grow__[My]__?Penis?..Up__To “7 Inches”.?’ or  to ‘save [my] prostate by doing this 60-second trick before breakfast’. I’m also unlikely to chat to Mia, 900m away, even though she’s sent me [14] unread messages and seems super keen to connect. Porn is a big slice of the junk mail pie chart (and it’s not just Mia – so many girls in my ‘local area’ are ‘waiting right now’; Kaitlyn has even ‘unlocked her private video’), but there’s plenty more to find if you care to dig past the juddering GIFs of naked, interchangeable women.

Health alerts abound for everything from erectile dysfunction to wrinkles and tinnitus; luckily, cures for the things that scare us must – aging, illness, impotence – are only a clicky-clicky away. There’s plenty of brand impersonation (from a quick glance at my own spam folder, I ostensibly have emails from Cadbury’s, Tesco, Aldi, and PayPal) which tends to intersect with the other major genre of junk: free stuff.

From winning a Dyson hoover to the less compelling notification that I’ve been chosen to ‘test and keep’ some Lenor fabric softener (think big, guys!), the lion’s share of a typical junk inbox is given over to straightforward good luck. Ooh, someone’s sent me $45,756.83 in Bitcoin! Funny, I don’t remember setting up an account with Crypto World… 

What all these emails have in common – arguably, what lies at the heart of their charm, if you can forget the cynicism of their originators – is the idea that a fortuitous error has been made.

Each message presents itself as evidence of a world where I have been mistakenly identified as the recipient of some huge payout/naked video/competition prize; the door is opened, then, for me to say ‘well, a chance like this doesn’t come along very often! It’s my lucky day’ as though I’m getting one over on the sender rather than the other way around. 

Don’t believe everything you see on the internet, kids: if you can bear to look but not touch, a reservoir of human weirdness awaits just below your stressy work correspondence and that email from your grandma you’re scared to open. In this email folder, life is just victory after victory: lovely lies that would make all the bullshit worth wading through, if only they were true.

Anyway, must dash – Mia’s just messaged again, and I think she could be the one.