We get a whole of spam at the MS Mansion, ranging from press pitches about pop acts to offers for cheap cialis to those bastions of Internet hilarity, the Nigerian 419 scams. You know, you’ve all gotten those emails; some Nigerian man passed away leaving an inheritance for you (you!) in the amount of millions of dollars; if only you’ll just reply with your name, address, social security number and bank account details it’ll all be yours!

From time to time I like to make a little game out of it by replying, feigning ignorance, and seeing what happens. To what end I’m not really sure, because usually after 3 or 4 replies the scammer gets hip to what I’m doing and stops writing back. I suppose the holy grail for me would be to get one of these scammers to send back a photo of himself holding up a sign that says “METAL SUCKS” on it. Think about the potential hilarity of such an image. I’ve tried a couple times but to no avail. The key is to get the scammers to go “off script” to where they can’t simply copy and paste a pre-prepared reply but instead actually have to type something in themselves. Then it gets really, really funny.

What got me onto this today is a post over at excellent metal blog No Clean Singing on this very topic in which main scribe Islander posts some of his own pretty hysterical replies to Nigerian scammer emails. Sample:

Dear Mr. Dewar, thank you for your interest in NO CLEAN SINGING.  I think it’s really fucking cool that you’re named after one of my favorite brands of scotch whiskey, and even more cool that you have such a deep personal interest in death metal, even though you’re a CONSULAR/DIPLOMAT and therefore probably as dull as a piece of dried dogshit.

I’d like to open up my mission to all MS readers; if you can bait a Nigerian scammer into sending back a photo of himself holding a handwritten sign that namedrops MS you’ll be rewarded in plentiful metal bounty (unfortunately I can’t match their offer of millions of dollars). This should go without saying, but obviously don’t provide ANY personal details of your own at all, not even a phone number, and it’d be best if you worked from a fake email address.

No disrespect meant to any of our readers who happen to be Nigerian. Our Analytics software tells me there are only 12 of you, so I think we’re good. But if you are Nigerian and know of any killer Nigerian metal bands… hey, send ‘em along!

-VN