Taking spammers up on their offers

Having received enough spam e-mails promising products to “Enhance H.E.R. Seexx m00d” and “M@ke ur g1rl_f1end WANT U,” John Hargrave decided to actually order some aphrodisiacs and test them. (“I am the perfect test subject,” he writes, “since I have never once aroused sexual desire in any female.”) Writing on the comedy Web site Zug, Hargrave says that while “Athena Pheromone 10X” might have worked for ancient pagan goddesses, it had no noticeable effect on his living modern wife or on strangers in the subway. He also tried two colognes, “Scent of Eros” and “The Edge,” one of which prompted his wife to declare that he smelled like “a New Delhi airport.” Next he actually sought out an aphrodisiac called PT-141 on the Web, but he didn’t have a sexual dysfunction that was bad enough to merit the clinical trial, and his attempted bribes for samples were rejected. Finally he tried the old standard aphrodisiac, Spanish Fly, but just as in a cheesy movie about bumbling would-be lovers, he forgot which food he had treated with it, and he may have ingested it himself while trying to dose his wife. Who knew spam was so much fun?

—Posted by Gregory Solman

June 21, 2005 | Permalink