I don't use social media so I read my email for entertainment. I don't get much email either, so I read my Spam. I actually look forward to it, it's like diving into the seedy corporate unconscious. I get emails from China trying to sell me things and emails from America trying to sell me fraud. The Chinese mails are like “receive the assembled 10kw hybrid solar system” and the American ones are like “Ukraine Downs Russian A-50 with AI… unveil the small company behind>>>” China thinks I'm an aspiring purchasing manager, America thinks I'm an aspiring Congressman. I am neither, but I read this garbage anyways. You can learn a lot about creatures by going through their garbage.

But I Digress

As a teenager, I spent an inordinate amount of time in dumpsters. I knew at any given time what was happening with any given dumpster because we circled them on our bikes. You have no idea how bored we were in suburban Ohio before the Internet. Once we found a TV which we took to the quarry to smash, with baseball bats. I assume we lit it on fire, I don't remember, we lit a lot of things on fire. Once we burned a whole garbage can to the ground. Threw in some WD-40 cans, AKA explosives, and watched the explosions. Once we found a racoon stuck in a dumpster. I tried to help him out and it nipped me for all my concern. And once, outside a drugstore, we found a dumpster full of magazines and just laid in them, feeling rich until the ultimate worthlessness of content dawned on us. I could have learned about the futility of my future career, if I'd thought about it at all.

I could have learned many things from dumpster diving. I could have learned that 1) TV is dead 2) shit is on fire 3) nature is angry and 4) journalism is worthless. The signs were all there, but no, I just experienced everything as brief interludes between more boredom. We had to shoplift to feel anything. If you were born without Internet, the suburbs were like an internment camp. Thank God I left before they got flooded with fent. But I am grateful for the boredom. I consider boredom my philosophical bedrock, really. Out of boredom comes curiosity, and out of fear of boredom comes pithy writing. I am too old for dumpster diving and anyways, Sri Lanka is way too alive for that so now when I'm bored I dive into my Spam folder. I find it enlightening.

The Political Economy Of Spam

Spam is the garbage of the Internet. Nobody wants it but you end up with a folder full of it anyways. But it's not really our garbage, there's a corporate consciousness out there that produces this shit as part of its metabolism, and enough people eat it that it forms a viable ecosystem. You can learn a lot about this corporate consciousness by digging through your Spam folder.

One of the most notable things I see is the difference in Spam I get from China compared to that from America. You can tell that China is a real economy because they're trying to sell you real things, and you can tell that America is a fraud because they're telling you how to get in on it.

Chinese spam is not generally trying to trick me. Industrial quantities of Fresh Caustic Soda or 38A Red Rubber Lining is simply not bait for most people. I don't really know what these things are, unlike penis or money problems, which are ubiquitous (not with me, shut up). China is not trying to find the dumbest person on the Internet, they're trying to find the purchasing manager. Or maybe the dumbest purchasing manager, who knows? Either way, Chinese spam means business.

American Spam, on the other hand, is either trying to outright defraud you (open this document) or inviting you into some bigger fraud. The latter I find fascinating, as it reflects the political economy of the whole Empire. Of course, someone is profiting from the war in Ukraine, the genocide of Gaza, and forever war. The US Congress is, at this point, just an insider trading club, a rubber stamp dipped in blood. American Spam reflects this in that it promises that you can get in on it. That you can join the ‘investor's circle’ if you just get the right email. And I get emails like this all the time, often with the biggest fraud of all—Trump—as a main character.

For example, this mail, saying, “One executive order. One under-the-radar company with extraction rights. And one chance—for everyday citizens like you—to get in before the masses. Click below to see how Trump's biggest deal yet could become your legacy too.” Of course, Trump's blatant corruption has nothing to do with everyday citizens. The same masturbators of the universe are getting the same insider information, the same access to stolen Venezuelan oil, the same contracts for baby-killing bombs, the same information about Trump's stock-moving tantrums. And the Spam emails reflect this political reality. There's no sense that anything can or should change here, but rather that you can get in on it.

This is the political economy of Spam. It reflects the economies it comes from. In China it comes from actual factories, and in America it comes from actual fraud. In each case you don't know if you'll actually get delivery, of course, but you're already getting an education, if you dive into it. You can learn a lot about creatures by watching them eat, and you can learn even more by going through their shit. That's why I go through my Spam folder, it shows the political economy of the world we live in, and how different it is, as revealed through its detritus.