“A Nigerian Prince Has an Offer For You”
This website does not get a ton of traffic. I think that’s clear to anyone who pays a visit; it’s poorly designed, not optimized for reading on smartphones, and I still don’t know how to turn my ads off of specific posts. And that’s ok; at one point, I did hope that this website would launch me into the stratosphere or something, but I gave up on those dreams quickly. For one, I didn’t do really any of the things that make a blog actually popular. I didn’t keep my posts short, I didn’t find a niche to follow, I don’t do barely any marketing or social media content, and I don’t use SEO tools or analytics or engagement opportunities or anything. That’s ok. It’s not my strength, and I’m fine not to get into online marketing. I hate it, so, so much. For my own mental health, I’m perfectly happy to resign this website to be, more or less, a way for me to stay in-practice with writing and a way for friends and family to keep tabs on where I am and what I’m up to.
Although believe it or not, I’ve gotten over to 30k views on this website over the four-and-a-half years since I first started it. That’s pretty cool! That’s more than my YouTube videos ever got. But then again, I’ve also got more than two hundred posts on here now. If you throw enough at a wall, eventually something sticks. All these views have netted me a cool $100 in revenue from the ads I’m running. For reference, that’s about the cost of one year of web hosting. Sure, I could have this same blog for free over on Medium or something like that, but really those hosting costs are paying for the domain name and the prestige of having my own web address, of having something that doesn’t have .medium or .debacle or something tacked on at the end. For some reason, that’s money I’m willing to spend.
But you don’t get any attention on any corner of the internet, no matter how small, without running into the oldest evil on the web; mailbox spam. That’s right, even my “Contact Me” page, on my website with a total of three dozen regular readers, gets regular form response spam. You probably know exactly what I’m talking about; those emails that you get once in a while that say stuff like “I HAVE $420 CAJILLION DOLLARS INHERITANCE AND I NEED TO SPEND IT ALL” or “Hey Cutie 😉 want to see sum pics UwU :0” or “Help I’m Stuck In The Google Servers Room Please Let Me Out.” If you know what’s good for you, they go into the garbage immediately. If not, well, that’s how you end up wire-transferring your life’s savings to a middle-aged Bosnian man pretending to be Nymph0-Katinka69 in a chat room. My website gets these too; luckily not to my personal email, but to a dedicated backend form response folder. And let me tell you, I didn’t check it on accident for, like, a year, and I came back to find over five hundred unread messages. And they were all spam.
In fact, because of that, I’ve developed a pretty lengthy blacklist of words that, if they’re detected by my “contact me” form, I filter them straight to the trash box. Of such colorful phrases, a fun sampling are: “crypto,” “bitcoin,” “jumboleadmagnet,” “intimate,” “skype,” “freeaiwriting,” “zeep,” “warriorplus,” “xoxourl,” a handful of words I’m not comfortable sharing here, and a collection of IP addresses and emails that were repeat offenders. And as far as I know, I haven’t gone wrong yet. Everything filtered out is exclusively spam. But I also don’t check my trash box, so I wouldn’t know.
But not all of these messages are vulgar, or frustrating, or even malicious; a lot of them are, I think, just people trying to hustle their own businesses in the most efficient ways possible. I can’t fault them for that, I suppose. I won’t be buying their services, but I don’t resent them for it. And once in a while, very very rarely, I get a genuine message in my box that isn’t a spam. That’s one of the best feelings of all, to see a form response that was written by an actual human, not copied and pasted or supplied by some bot they got on the dark web. But between this spectrum of the weird, the genuine, and the downright frightening, I have saved and collected a small sampling of form responses that are quite… unique, in one way or another. And I’d like to take the time to share some of my favorites with you.
The Good
Let’s start with some heartwarming stuff, shall we? There are that small, select handful of responses that were written by people I know who actually wanted to reach out to me and offer some sort of encouragement, or a joke, or something. I’ve kept pretty much every form response that I’ve gotten from someone I know; not that there’ve been a lot, mind you. There’d be more, if you counted all the comments my mom has left on my posts over the years (thanks, Mom), but these are just specifically the ones sent to that “contact me” link up at the top.
And if you know me, don’t feel like this means you have to write something to me now; you certainly can if you want to, I guess, but there’s a good chance I won’t see it for weeks, or months, or longer… and if you include words like “Ovamp” (which, why would you, really?) I won’t see it at all. But there are the ones that got through!
Hi
-Kenny, November of 2018
-Melanie, November of 2018
ILY and thanks for lunch yesterday <3
HI ANDY
-William Sima, November of 2018
MAKE SURE YOU PUT ME ON YOUR LIST.
GREAT JOB LOVE YOU GRANDPA SIMA
I told you I wanted to start with the heartwarming ones, right? I also told myself I wouldn’t cry while writing this piece, but here we are anyway… Honestly, there are two specific form responses that inspired me to write this post. One of them is in “The Weird” section, because I saw it and I thought “The world needs to see this.” The other one is this one from Grandpa Sima. The caps are all his, naturally. When I first got this message, back in 2018, I thought it was so sweet that he was reading my blog and wanted me to add him to the list, even though he was already on it. Classic old people, amirite? He still used AOL until the day he died, and we found a free year-long trial of AOL, on CD, from 2000, in his office when we cleaned it out. When he passed away, I kept this message as a memento and a reminder of the fact that he really, truly did love me and all his grandchildren. In a weird way, it’s one of my most treasured physical reminders of him, even if it’s not strictly “physical.” It is one of the only things I have from him that he wrote to me directly, or at least the only one I have easy access to. So it’s kind of like he’s still talking to me, just a little bit. And I’m going to keep it forever, of course. Other form responses be damned, I’ll keep them all if I have to, just to keep this one.
For a lot of the good ones, I won’t be sharing the form responses specifically, since they sometimes contain information that might be just enough for someone to figure out who sent it. I don’t intend to dox anyone through this blog, so I’ll leave out anything that could be potentially, ah, incriminating, for lack of a better word. At least for the people I know, anyway.
After Grandpa Sima passed, and I wrote my memorial to him on here, I got a message from an old friend of his from a Ford Model A club that Grandpa was a part of. I was surprised that he had come across my blog, but I thought it was really sweet that he reached out to me. He ended up sending me a copy of their club’s monthly newsletter, which had a brief memorial to my grandfather in it. So I’m really glad that he got in touch with me, too. I’ll be keeping that.
After I won an environmental writing contest in college with my essay “Burn Zone” (which I do recommend you read, as I’m very proud of it), the University of Illinois Liberal Arts and Sciences Magazine also published a copy in their fall 2021 issue. Incredibly, I got responses from people on this blog who said they really enjoyed my story. Which was utterly wild to me, because a) it felt incredible to have random strangers telling me how much they liked my writing, and b) I definitely did not include this blog in my author bio. At least, I don’t think I did? And yet, they found me, which was super cool. Hey, if you want to make a writer’s day, that’s how you really do it; drop them random positive feedback in unknown locations. It sure as hell made my week when I got them.
I did read about your Philmont adventure in LAS Newsletter. My favorite place in the West is about any part of the Rio Grande rift.
-A Fan, September of 2021
Having just finished “Burn Zone” in the U of I LAS magazine, I felt compelled to reach out and commend you.
I know you’ve received accolades for your writing, but I wanted to recognize its strength and effectiveness. What an engaging style and command of the language.
I’m gearing up to read the work of my AP Lit students, and reading this renews my hope that some people love language. A nice way to start the day.
-Another Fan, January of 2022
Now that’s an ego boost right there. I hope they don’t mind that I’m sharing their praise of me with the world, because it felt great to open up that form response folder and see something that wasn’t just more spam. I like to think that these people, wherever they are, would be happy to know how much their messages meant to me. I’m pretty sure I reached out to both of them to thank them personally.
On a semi-related note, I distinctly recall receiving a form response from someone who told me that they were a camper at Philmont when I worked at Hunting Lodge, and they found my story of Sirenhead online because they heard me tell it live around a campfire. It was, again, incredibly surreal to have someone tell me that a) they were so deeply moved by my story that they sought it out later, and b) they found me. It might have been an email, or a comment, maybe? Not sure how they would have gotten my email. I definitely wouldn’t have deleted it if it was a form response, and yet, it’s nowhere to be seen. That’s a shame. Hopefully it will pop up someday down the line when I go through all these posts to prepare them for a physical printing and a collection of essays. We’ll see.
But on a totally related and very concrete note, I also received a form response from, uh, the official Philmont Staff Association magazine. Much to my surprise, they weren’t sending me a cease-and-desist letter for whatever slander I threw around about Philmont in the many, many years I’ve been talking about it, but rather they wanted to reprint my blog post in the newsletter. WHAT? WHAT DO YOU MEAN? ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT? They wanted to reprint my first story about Philmont, actually, which I do seem to recall being my weakest one, but perhaps the fact that it was less laden with swears and questionable staff antics is what drew them to it. I know for a fact I responded to that man, and I said, “Yes! Please! You can reprint it! Let me edit it for you so it’s not hot garbage.” And he said: “…” there was no response. For whatever reason (maybe he correctly realized this wasn’t the kind of material they wanted?), he never got back to my direct email. Oh, well. You win some, you lose some, you scare some off. So it goes.
That’s kind of it for The Good, but I do think that’s good enough. It’s a lot of emotion, good emotions, for sure. Like I said, I haven’t had a ton of other direct, personal form responses, people reaching out to me for business or feedback or anything like that. The good news of this is that no one has thrown copyright claims my way yet! The bad news is that, well, every other form response is… spam.
The Bad
Spam emails can be more than annoying; they can be downright destructive. Data analysts estimate that over a trillion (with a T) pieces of spam are sent every year, may cost over $100 billion dollars in energy, lost time, and machinery, and at one point (2008) took up over 90% of the world’s email traffic. Things have improved since then, but it hasn’t always been easy. Today, it’s harmless to open a spam email, except for the emotional risk of seeing something you can never unsee. But back in the day, before your Google Chromes and Microsoft Edges had automated virus protection built-in, your computer could get infected with malicious software just by opening an email.
In 2000, the ILOVEYOU computer worm went around the world by hiding in an email with the subject “I LOVE YOU” or “LOVE LETTER” or some variation of that. If you opened the email, the virus hid in your computer, messed with some files, and then copied a new email to every contact in your address book, where it then spread to anyone else who opened the new email. By the time this thing had gone around, it was estimated that 10% of every computer with internet access had been affected, and it effectively shut down email communications for the week. It’s considered one of the most destructive computer virus outbreaks ever. I learned about this in a geography class, for some reason, along with STUXNET, or, the American-Israeli attempt at destabilizing the Iranian nuclear program by Spinning Too FastTM. I don’t remember why we learned this. It had something to do with globalism. Hmm.
Luckily, none of my spam emails have been nearly that destructive (though I won’t be including any of the links from the original form responses. You know, just in case). They just waste my time with the unnecessary effort to remove them. I’m not going to include all of them in here, obviously; that would be terrible and be a waste of everyone’s time. Instead, I’m going to offer you a quick sampling, some choice quotes, if you will, of what I get en masse on a weekly basis. It’s a selection of the worst of the worst, really. Whether it’s bland, unhelpful, malicious, or just… uh, playing to my baser instincts, it’s just bad.
Elon Musk is a visionary and he is well knowned to have the midas touch. Anything he tweets or gets involved in, goes up in prices.
Elon Musk caused Bitcoin’s price to soar when he tweeted about it.
The most important question everyone has is: “what is next?”
The short answer is a newly listed NASDAQ crypto mining company from Canada.
Rumours have it that Elon Musk or Tesla might have or is going to acquire a stake in this newly listed NASDAQ.
Many are waiting for his “infamous” tweets to send stock price soaring.
Don’t miss out on this golden opporunity!
-A Musk Fan Boy, drinking liberal tears
I don’t think it should come as a shock to anyone that I do not like Elon Musk. I think he’s an overblown hack who used his privilege to abuse his friends and the working class and make a shit-ton of money that he didn’t do anything to actually earn. But I do think it’s funny when people fawn over him and flock to him like he’s some sort of new tech messiah. I think those days are mostly over now, though. Admittedly, in another timeline, I might have been one of those fanboys, but I’m sure as hell glad it’s not this timeline.
I hope this email finds you well. I write articles about DIY topics, and I am working on one right now I thought you might be interested in for your website. Basically, I’m outlining easy fixes for common home maintenance tasks.
You know how easy it is to let small to-dos at home pile up, right? My list currently includes mice extermination, broken drawer handle, a cracked piece of molding, and a hole in the drywall from a door knob. I love fixing things, though, and I have the skills to know how quick and easy the work actually is.
-Tim Allen, before he got weird
I feel a little bad including this one, since there’s nothing inherently wrong about it. It’s just some guy trying to build his brand. I respect it. Like I said before, I don’t hold it against him. It’s just… I am the wrong audience, buddy. Read the room, please. I toyed with the idea of posting a DIY home improvement post from this guy, just for the shits and giggles, but then I realized I would have to pay for it, and that idea disappeared quickly. But I get ones like this, all the time, and always from different guys, too. I don’t know if there are just that many home improvement bloggers out there, or if they’re in some sort of home improvement cabal, but I see a lot of this. Next.
Hey, my name’s Eric and for just a second, imagine this…
– Someone does a search and winds up at owlmanandy.com.
– They hang out for a minute to check it out. “I’m interested… but… maybe…”
– And then they hit the back button and check out the other search results instead.
– Bottom line – you got an eyeball, but nothing else to show for it.
– There they go.
This isn’t really your fault – it happens a LOT – studies show 7 out of 10 visitors to any site disappear without leaving a trace.
But you CAN fix that.
-Eric Jones, Real Human Man
I’ve gotten an absurd number of emails from this guy. And for once, it’s actually from one email. Usually the spam bots use random email accounts that they’ve created and/or stolen to bypass any IP address filters that I have in place, but this guy used the same IP address/email every time, every week, for years. He might still be sending me this same message, for all I know. I’ve filtered him out, but he is nothing if not persistent.
The financial Robot is your future wealth and independence.
Most successful people already use Robot. Do you?
-500 Robots Trying To Sell Me Other Robots
I was so sick of seeing these! These are the ones that gave me five hundred unread form responses. And it was all the same ones! Just variations of this same statement, over, and over, and over, and over again! Do you know the definition of insanity? It’s robots! They just kept trying to sell my bitcoin and crypto currency and NFTs, though they didn’t try to sell me those until the market had already tanked. Crypto is a scam! NFTs are a scam! They exist to sell themselves! I’m so, so glad that I don’t have to hear about NFTs anymore. And I’m so, so glad that I can just filter all this stuff out now.
I also get a weirdly high number of form responses in other languages. Using Google Translate I can get a rough idea of what they’re saying, and they’re always just ads for more Search Enginge Optimization or Web Traffic service provider or something like that. But this time, they’re in Spanish. Or Russian. Or… Armenian and Afrikaans, one time? I don’t know why they think that I, of all people, would be able to read any of these languages, since I barely passed my high school AP Spanish test and have not spoken it since except to toast shots of tequila at my cousin’s wedding. But they keep coming.
Hola. ¿Cómo estás? Soy Alberto del Departamento de Prensa. Muchas gracias por atenderme.He pensado que podría interesarte cómo podemos hacer que tu empresa aparezca en más de 50 periódicos digitales como noticia (No será un anuncio) por una única cuota al mes sin permanencia. Las noticias no se borrarán….
-Alberto, del Departamento de Prensa.
This one is just asking me if I want to get into digital newspapers. Are those, like, a thing? Obviously I get that the New York Times or Fox or CNN could be considered, broadly, “digital newspaper” (maybe not Fox), but is this a mistranslation on my part or are people genuinely reading digital newspapers? Maybe a better translation would be “email newsletters” or something like that. “I’ll get you into an e-list server” is more appealing than “I’ll put your article in the Dade County Morning Reporter.” Again, I can’t fault whoever’s sending me these things. There’s got to be business for it somewhere. But when did I end up on these bulk mail servers?
Then there’s this one, in Russian, which I got back in July of 2022 but never actually translated until just today, and holy shit I did not know what it said. Oh, geez, am I gonna get put on a list for this one? Alright, here we go;
Доброго утра! Наша компания представляет лучшие прогоны “убийцы” для интернет-сайтов конкурентов. Цена: от 2 тыс руб. – 100% результат. Веб-сайты ваших конкурентов “умрут”. – Предельно возможное число негативных фитбеков. – Собрана специфическая база – самые “смертоносные” площадки из 10 млн. интернет-сайтов (порно, вирусных, спамных и тому подобных). Это действует безотказно. – Прогон осуществляем одновременно с 4-х серверов. – Постоянная отправка вирусных ссылок на официальный e-mail. – Можем растянуть сколько угодно по времени. – Прогоняем с запретными ключевыми фразами.
-Petr Velkov, and yes that is really what how he signed it.
And the translation, from Google Translate:
Good morning! Our company presents the best “killer” runs for competitors’ websites. Price: from 2 thousand rubles. – 100% result. Your competitors’ websites will die. – The maximum possible number of negative feedback. – A specific database has been collected – the most “deadly” sites out of 10 million Internet sites (viral, spam, and the like). This works flawlessly. – Run is carried out simultaneously from 4 servers. – Constant sending of viral links to the official e-mail. We can stretch as long as we want. – We drive away with forbidden key phrases.
-Petr Velkov, now with a sinister accent
AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THIS PETR? WHY ARE YOU SAYING THESE THINGS? I DO NOT WANT THESE SERVICES! WHY IS THIS AD SO VIOLENT?
Like I get that this translation is probably pretty rough, and if anyone has a better one, please share it with me, but what the fuck is this? Like I know that I got this after the invasion of Ukraine began, but it takes on a much more frightening aura now that I know what it means. Is this just business as usual in Russia? At least in America we hide the corporate violence behind a thin veneer of jargon language like “Mergers and Acquisitions,” “Oil Extraction Processes,” “Acceptable Margins of Error,” and “Copyright Protections,” but could you imagine being this blunt to anyone about offering them what sure as hell sounds like a DDOS attack? And why did they send it to me?
At least the ones in other languages are less frightening. Not that some of the ones in English aren’t frightening, to be sure, but we’ll get to that. Here’s the ones in Armenian and Afrikaans that I mentioned. Or at least, that’s what Google Translate tells me.
Ողջույն, ես ուզում էի իմանալ ձեր գինը.Translates to: “Hello, I wanted to know your price.”
-Where the hell is Armenia
Hallo, ek wou jou prys ken.
Translates to: “Hello, I wanted to know your price.”
-Wait, what?
Well, what an educational day this has been. Learning to identify knew languages and say phrases in contexts that don’t make any sense. What price? What am I selling? What do they think I’m selling? Price for the website? Do you want my domain name? What is this? Why is this all you sent me? And why in two different languages?
I just don’t know. I don’t know how these people find my site, or where they come from, or what they want. Hopefully just legitimate business. But now knowing what the Russians keep sending me, I’m not so sure it’s legitimate after all. Not that, you know, spam ever really is. But you get the idea.
Then, of course, there are the classic “sexy” emails. These ones are some of my favorite generic “bad” spam messages, because they’re always so goofy and weird and have such a specific demographic in mind and yet, they work. Not on me, of course. I mean, I’ve been catfished on dating apps before, sure, there’s spam on there, too. but I’ve never actually had my money stolen or anything. Just lead to some very… unsavory websites, we’ll say. I just think the way they phrase these messages is funny.
Нellо all, guуѕǃ I knоw, my meѕsagе mау be too ѕpесifіc,
-Nymph0-Katinka69
But my ѕistеr found nіcе mаn hеrе and theу marrіеd, sо how аbоut mе?ǃ 🙂
Ι am 23 уeаrs old, Catherina, frоm Rоmаniа, I knоw Еnglіsh аnd Gеrmаn lаnguagеѕ аlsо
Аnd… Ι have sрeсіfic diѕeaѕe, namеd nymрhomаnіа. Who know what iѕ thiѕ, cаn undеrѕtand mе (better to ѕау it immеdіatеlу)
Аh yeѕ, I cоok verу taѕty! and Ι lоve not onlу cоok ;))
Ιm real girl, nоt рrоstіtutе, and lоoking for ѕerіous аnd hоt relationѕhip…
And how could we forget the coveted Bisexual Variant:
I аm 27 уeаrs оld, Каrina, from thе Сzесh Rеpublic, knоw Еnglish lаnguаge аlso
-Spent the Entire Budget of the Czech Republic on Bisexual Lighting
And… better to ѕау іt іmmеdіаtelу. I аm bisеxuаl. I am nоt jеalоuѕ of аnothеr woman… esреcіаllу іf we makе lоvе together.
Αh yeѕ, I cook verу tastуǃ аnd Ι lovе not onlу сook ;))
Glad to see that the bisexuals are finally getting the spotlight they deserve in the spam email industry. Us pansexuals will just have to wait it out on the sidelines in the meantime.
But that’s enough of the generic, the bland, the openly hostile. Let’s get into some more esoteric.
The Weird
Did you know that the first spam email (defined as an “unsolicited bulk email message”) was sent by a guy named Gary Thuerk in 1978? He was selling new computer parts and he sent it to over 400 recipients. Amazingly, this marketing move netted his company $13 million dollars in sales. I guess there’s a reason spam keeps on coming; it works. The wild thing about this story to me, though, is that he sent his spam over the ARPAnet. As in, the precursor to the internet. As in, the internet that was only connected to research institutions and defense sites. As in, the system developed, funded, and maintained by the United States Military. I am certain that he got a stern talking-to for that little stunt.
But spam can be more than just for business, too. It can be just kind of friggin’ weird at times. I think that everyone has, at least once, opened a spam email, read it, stopped, read it again, checked themselves for symptoms of a stroke, and then read it a third time, and it still didn’t make any coherent sense. If that sounds like you, then perhaps you’ve seen one of these weirdo, wackass emails that are usually, but not limited to, tinged with strange religious fervor, chock full of conspiracy theories, sometimes doused in antisemitism, and almost always funny as hell. Oh, if only Bonzi Buddy was here to see the crusty-ass world we have created. Rest in Piss.
At one point, I got live five emails in a row, all from different IP addresses, just about how Buddhism was the key to not only personal enlightenment, but also personal profit(???). I’m not sure that’s what Siddharta Gautama intended when he fell asleep under that fig tree and set down the Noble Eightfold Path to alleviate suffering and achieve Nirvana, but apparently, now I can watch a TED talk on it and find my own way to spiritual and economic enlightenment. Now for only $19.99 a month!
Many have the misconception of Buddhism being a religion. Buddhism is really more of a way of life whch can wired our brains positively and see changes in a different light.
Since fate has brough us here, we hope you can spend some time to explore Buddhism.
In his TEDx talk, he will share a teaching from the oldest printed book in the world—the Diamond Cutter Sutra—which helps us get everything we want in life, in a way which also helps the entire world. We will be learning an ancient method known as the Four Steps, which can be applied to five different goals: financial independence for the rest of our life; great personal and professional relationships; vibrant health and energy; a clear, happy, and focused mind—and most importantly, how we can use all these to find out why we came into this world, and how we can live a life of great purpose and meaning.
Geshe Michael Roach is a Princeton University graduate who spent 25 years in a Tibetan monastery and is the first American to be awarded the degree of Geshe, or Master of Buddhism. He utilized his monastery training to help build a major New York corporation which reached $250 million in annual sales, and was sold to super-investor Warren Buffett in 2009. Michael used a large portion of his business profits, and support from companies like Hewlett Packard, to found a 25-year effort to train and pay Tibetan refugees to input thousands of their endangered ancient books and make them available online for free.
We are not affiliated to Michael Roach in anyway.
-Not Michael Roach, Apparently
Hey, the part about the books seems cool, but where’s the part about living an ascetic lifestyle in the forest or taking a vow of poverty? I get that there are lots of different practices and styles of Buddhism, but something about this just doesn’t gel with me. If only I could put my finger on it…
This isn’t the only religious message I’ve got in my inbox, though. The pendulum swings the other way, of course, so now it’s time for that classic Evangelical Christian Hate Speech message that I think everyone’s gotten at least one of in some inbox. I got mine in December of 2020; when did you get yours? I can’t even include the whole thing, I feel filthy just thinking about it. Oh, and before anyone says anything about endorsing these messages, let me just say: I do not. I do not endorse this following message. Vaccines are safe. They don’t alter your DNA. Get vaccinated. Microsoft isn’t the Devil (I think?). For legal reasons, this is a joke. Don’t delist my website, please. You’re gonna see real quick why I want to preface this first.
Bill Gates saying the v*a*x*x* will alter your DNA permanently..666 Mark Of The Beast
Bill Gates caught on video admitting vaccine will CHANGE our DNA FOREVER.
MESSAGE FROM FATHER YHWH~WHEN THE COVID VACCINE BECOMES MANDATORY, IT IS TIME FOR THE DELIVERANCE~
Warning! Time Sensitive Information!! 3 Days of Darkness Confirmation!!
mRNA vaccine by Moderna contains *Luciferin* dissolved with *66.6* ml of distilled *phosphate* buffer solution.
Microsoft submits a patent for the 666 mark of the beast
WO2020060606 = World Order 2020 666Revelation 13:16-18 King James Version (KJV)
16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.Also be warned, the catholic church is a false religion that is not part of the Christian faith! They worship Mary, pray to idols, call the pope “father”, and much more which all go against the 10 commandments and God’s holy word.
-Ron DeSantis, probably
They really went all out with this. They had three other bible quotes, and links to YouTube videos (like eight videos in total!), and it just went on and on about all this stuff with the vaccine and the devil and the whole shebang. And of course they had to throw that stuff about the Catholics in there, right at the end. Honestly, that was the funniest thing to me because I didn’t even see it the first time. It was like a little afterthought, like they had to add it in at the end. “DON’T GET TEH VACCINE! IT IS THE WORK OF SANTA! 666! DON’T LET YOUR KIDS LISTEN TO METALLICA! DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS WILL STEAL THEIR SOULS! REPENT! Oh, and, uh, also we don’t like the Pope very much. Just in case you were wondering.” Hey, I’m no lover of institutionalized religion myself, but they do know the Catholic Church came first, right? Doesn’t that count for anything these days?
This next one, though, I’ll admit that it almost got to me. Almost. I read it, and I had to double-check it to make sure I had read it properly, because I’ll be honest, I was this close to believing it. The spammers are getting smarter, it seems, or perhaps their PR department is getting better, because for a few minutes before I did some independent research and went back and checked my sources and account security, I was really worried. It’s been months now, I got this message back in September of 2022, but my heart skipped a beat that day. Hey, points to them. It’s weird, but it’s a good one.
Your Site Has Been Hacked
PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO SOMEONE IN YOUR COMPANY WHO IS ALLOWED TO MAKE IMPORTANT DECISIONS!
We have hacked your website https://owlmanandy.com and extracted your databases.
How did this happen?
Our team has found a vulnerability within your site that we were able to exploit. After finding the vulnerability we were able to get your database credentials and extract your entire database and move the information to an offshore server.
What does this mean?
We will systematically go through a series of steps of totally damaging your reputation. First your database will be leaked or sold to the highest bidder which they will use with whatever their intentions are. Next if there are e-mails found they will be e-mailed that their information has been sold or leaked and your https://owlmanandy.com was at fault thusly damaging your reputation and having angry customers/associates with whatever angry customers/associates do. Lastly any links that you have indexed in the search engines will be de-indexed based off of blackhat techniques that we used in the past to de-index our targets.
How do I stop this?
We are willing to refrain from destroying your site’s reputation for a small fee. The current fee is $2500 in bitcoins (BTC).
Once you have paid we will automatically get informed that it was your payment. Please note that you have to make payment within 7 days after receiving this e-mail or the database leak, e-mails dispatched, and de-index of your site WILL start!
What if I don’t pay?
If you decide not to pay, we will start the attack at the indicated date and uphold it until you do, there’s no counter measure to this, you will only end up wasting more money trying to find a solution. We will completely destroy your reputation amongst google and your customers.
This is not a hoax, do not reply to this email, don’t try to reason or negotiate, we will not read any replies. Once you have paid we will stop what we were doing and you will never hear from us again!
Please note that Bitcoin is anonymous and no one will find out that you have complied.
-hacker@email.com (I’m dead serious, their email address was hacker)
They chose the wrong blogger to mess with, because, man, if they had been for real, I would have just given up right then and there. You can have the damn thing. It’s not worth $2500 to me. You can’t hold something hostage if I don’t care about it. PLus there’s nothing here for them to steal, anyway. Obviously, nothing happened, my blog is still alive and kicking and actually pulling more views than ever (I get a whole fifty a day sometimes!). It kind of reminds me of this time in my freshman year of college when I got a phone call from an unknown number in Mexico and a very real, very angry person told me they had kidnapped a family member of mine. They then put someone on the line who was very real and very much screaming and crying and begging for help, and then the first guy demanded that I wire-transfer them money for my family member’s release. I had class in fifteen minutes so I was freaking out, I immediately texted my family and made sure everyone was safe before I told the guy that my phone was gonna die. I hung up and turned it off for the next hour and a half, and sat, shellshocked, for a lecture about how the world is ending from climate change but also maybe it’s good if all the humans die. I still think about that call, and wonder what it was like on the other end of the line. It must have been a scam, those fake calls are a pretty common thing now, but what if? What if they got the wrong number? Should I have reported it? To this day I still will never answer a phone call from an unknown number, unless they leave a voicemail. It was… a weird time for me.
In the same vein of trying to manipulate someone out of fear and/or greed, we have this exceptionally specific one that uses the old “Nigerian Prince” trick. It’s the classic “I have a lot of money but I need someone in America to help me process it, let me send it to you,” and then they steal your bank account information. Except this one is incredibly detailed about how this man got his money, and why exactly he needs it gone now. Well, as they say in creative writing class, show, don’t tell, and this is definitely showing me something:
My name is Jose Manuel, I live in France. I suffer from a serious illness which condemns me to a
-Jose Manuel, of French Bottling Fame
certain death is cancer. That being said, I have a
sum of 1770,000 euros in my account with the Bank which I would like to make a donation to a trustworthy and honest person so that he can make good use of it. I own a bottle manufacturing business.
Please contact me quickly if you are
interested in my Don, because my days are numbered.
Ah, yeah, I would be interested in your Don, because of course any trustworthy and honest person would be interested in such a thing.
This is the last one, now, and it’s a short one, but it is truly one of my favorites. I want you to read it and think about it, really think and imagine the implications of this mail. Are you ready?
Dear Sir/mdm,
-Raymond, Friendly Neighborhood Explosion-Proof Camera Salesman
Hope you are doing well
We supply 4G solar cameras, explosion-proof cameras and underwater cameras for commercial use. Use of applications: ships, construction sites, oil rigs and nuclear reactor etc..
Do contact us for any enquiries and visit our website below
We also have nitrile gloves if you need some
WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK I AM? WHAT DO YOU THINK I DO? WHAT IS THIS?
Believe it or not, it’s this explosion-proof camera one that was what (partially) drove me to put this post together. Sure, the V*A*X*X one is great, and it’s also gonna get me on a no-fly list (and rightfully so), but that camera one just came so completely out of left field that it absolutely floored me. I don’t know why that one over the other ones, but the 4G cameras just did it for me. The sheer absurdity of it, of someone who has clearly never once been to my website, trying to sell me cameras (as if I could use a camera in any meaningful way), and to make sure I know the cameras are explosion-proof. What the hell would I ever need explosion-proof cameras for? Who needs explosion-proof cameras? The government? The military? Oil rigs? Nuclear reactors? The Russians? Bill Gates? Is this a defense contractor trying to offload his extra stock? Why did they think I, of all people, can afford that? But more importantly, where do I sign?
But, anyway, that’s the end of the form responses, the last ones of all the ones I’ve saved over time since I started this blog. It’s crazy the kind of weird mail you can get in five years, isn’t it? Who knows what the next five years of wacky mail will be! Maybe someone reading this will think “I know the perfect scam” and send me a form response about how they have owls for sale and all I have to do to get my own owl is submit my social security number and credit card information into this definitely legitimate website www.owlsarecoolandfreeforyou.bosnia and then it’ll all be over from there. I’d be ruined, truly, and the spam will finally have won.
