[Previous entry: "Hipster Economics"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "spim II"]

03/02/2004 Archived Entry: "Spim"

We love spam. Now we have Spim. I think we're going about this all wrong. We need to embrace the genre of spam as a writing form we can use for getting ideas across. I had the idea already about a special journal edition (of a nice new media journal I know) whose focus would be spam (all the essays about something dealing with spam). But rather than just post the journal online, we'd spam all the subscribers with it about 20 times a day.

So how about a class where students engage with spam (and now spim) in all kinds of provocative ways?

For your next essay, compose a series of spams you will use to get your other classmates to do something, believe in something, or consider something. Your spam must be at least 500 words long and include HTML and images. Think about what kinds of headers you can compose so that readers will open your document. Catch their attention quickly.

You can't avoid media, you know? It infects you like a virus. Once infected, how do you respond? Think Burroughs before you answer.

Of course, this assignment doesn't have to be done only with email. There are other ways to spam....