Today, I received one of the strangest pieces of spam that I have ever received. (Aside from the Markovian spam about Captain Blood and my sister, that is…) Here is today’s email in it’s entirety:

To: Sean
From: Neateye (nitaigouranga@aol.com)
Subject: Gouranga

Call out Gouranga be happy
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga
That which brings the highest happiness!

Strange, eh? I’m not even sure whether or not to consider it as spam. They don’t appear to be selling me anything, but it IS unsolicited. Perplexed as to the meaning and purpose of this mysterious email, I jumped on Wikipedia to help me find the answers. Amazingly, searching for “Gouranga” results in an explanation of the entire issue!

Apparently, Gouranga is a word from Hare Krishna meaning something close to “be happy”. It’s origins in spam form are unclear, but apparently a group of people now exist who simply send this email out to random people on a semi-regular basis. The strange thing about them is that they apparently always use the same (fake) email address: nitaigouranga@aol.com.

While part of me is inclined to think of these emails as spam, another part of me finds them strangely charming. They’re very unlike spam for several reasons:

• They’re not trying to sell me anything or “enLARrge my P3n1s”.
• They’ve only sent me one (so far.)
• They’re not trying to avoid filtering since they’re always sent from the same address.
• They’re not asking me to “forward this message to 25 friends or face cosmic consequences.”
• They genuinely seem like they just want me to be happy…

I guess there’s a fine line between email spam and serendipitous entertainment, but I feel that these emails fall into the latter category. It’s just so … weird. I like the idea of non-repeated, anonymous, semi-mysterious emails with messages of goodwill. Maybe, just maybe, this is a sign that the world isn’t going to hell in a handbasket.

Gouranga!