Babble 419

I used to have a PC DOS program called “Babble.” It was a fairly simple Markov chain based AI that would produce pseudo-coherent text based on user input… A friend of mine once typed in the dialogue from daytime television commercials and the program told him that “Inside of every Nordic-Track body hides an effervescent rush of hemorrhoidal tissue.”

You just can’t argue with statements like that. It sums up the whole daytime TV experience.

If you’re interested in trying it out for yourself, I think I found a place to download it here. At that same site they’ve got a bunch of similar looking software for the Mac that I plan on trying. It’s like you’re playing word association games with someone else’s text, looking for hidden meanings.

The thing that set this all off was yet another scam E-mail asking me to help some down-on-his luck ex-despot smuggle a couple of million dollars out of Africa. The common name for the scam is the Nigerian 419. It follows the classic con-game promise of a huge payoff in exchange for a modest investment, but it wraps it in such a charming package.

Sometimes I like reading through the scam just to see who is offering me the money, and why. Most of the writers pretend to be Doctors of some type or retired military officers. I’ve even gotten one purporting to be from a young man on behalf of his recently widowed mother. A writer over at Salon waxed nostalgic about the style and atmosphere of the letters, so if you want more of that, go read his article. What snagged my attention was the repetition.

After reading two or three of these in a row the effect is like a really complex baroque fugue. Somewhere under all the flourishes of language and the exotic names and locations you can get a sense of the core of the piece. The letters are all variations on a common scam, so some repeating themes are to be expected, but it’s darker than that. It’s like there’s an ideal framework that all of this extra detail has been draped over. Somewhere, deep inside the body of every Nigerian 419 scam hides a skeletal crutch of secrecy, subterfuge, greed and betrayal…