Spammed with Flattery
If I’m having a lacklustre day, I’ve taken to diving into my spam folder to cheer myself up.
In there, I can find all the praise and adulation a girl could wish for. A celebration of who I am, and the work I do. Complete strangers purporting to be from the book world tell me they are “charmed by” my “warmth, wit and humour”, my “honest, funny, and relatable insights”, that I am “hilarious, wise and brutally honest”.
This sort of flattery can really brighten your day. Not just mine – gushing adoration is available to anyone who has ever written a book.
It’s not personal. It’s not even human. It is AI at its best – or worst, depending on your view. Writers around the world describe it as “an epidemic of email scams”, filling inboxes until you report and block each one, at which point they fill your spam folder on the daily.
Which is where I like to poke my nose now and then to have a read of the saccharine goodness (“emotionally resonant and memorable”) and pretend just for a moment that they’re real.
It’s all a scam, a baited hook attempting to pull you into a fantasy world in which you could be wildly rich and/or famous if you just share bank account details and invest a tiny bit of dosh into taking up their incredible offer to connect you with a global audience.
These people (not really people) say they represent book clubs and festivals around the world, some you’ve even heard of. They’ve invited me to BBC radio interviews, to make TV appearances in Australia and America, and have offers from publishers.
You can spot them a mile off. The email addresses are generic, or contain tiny spelling oddities, and sometimes open with “Hello Michele A’Court” which is not the human way of things.
Neither is such effusive praise. That’s the biggest tip-off. People in the writing and publishing world are lovely, but sparing with their adjectives. Get extravagant and someone will get out a red pen. You won’t get “A book full of laughter, truth, and heart” in a business email – that nonsense is reserved for a cover blurb much further down the line.
AI does its best to be human. “Hi Michele, I’ll start with a small confession. I didn’t plan to email you. But [insert name of book here] caught my attention…” Bless, it couldn’t help itself.
Lovely to roll around in the unfettered admiration, though. They can be fun to read out loud – I try different accents to see which works best. Currently I’m torn between posh-British and breathy-LA.
They’re helpful in overcoming our negativity bias - we need large numbers of compliments to counter a single criticism, so here’s a way to stock up on positive feedback.
Artificial affirmation is available not just to authors. They target feature writers and people with newsletters, and you might qualify if you’ve written a really good shopping list at some point.
Here’s another way you can get in on the action - I did one of those “how fast could you reach your goal weight” online surveys but stepped out of the process when they asked for credit card details. Now I’m getting a slew of emails from a nice lady called Elle, Head Nutritionist, saying she’s “reaching out one more time” because she reckons I’m a bit special and they could get me really thin.
I like reading those ones while I’m lying on the couch with a cup of tea and a biscuit.