1. n., a post-tech age noun that actually describes nothing at all; a virtual entity on bulletin boards and internet dating sites.
2. specifically, an ad or personal page for a person that in
fact does not exist, using a picture that has been pirated from someone else, designed to entice or '
hook' people to respond to the ad, in order to gather the resulting email address and add it to a list for spamming; typically spamhooks accumulate the email address and then respond back to it with an advertisement for a porn site.
3. often an element of 'spamhook recursion', where spamhook #1 will gather your address and spam you to go get your rocks off at dating site #1, where dating site #1 will have various spamhooks listed with great looking females to create responses so you can be spammed about porn site #1, which has shocking photos and "members" to entice you to respond to who will spam you again about dating site #1. The recursion can be multiple layers
deep, endless, and accumulative: site #1 can refer you to #3 which refers you back to #1 and also to #4 which refers you to #5 and also back to three leading to an cascade of
spam that will fill your inbox and
crash your email.
4. spamhooks create synergy: the common dating site spamhook is very demanding and "requires" a photo of you or the person (spamhook) won't even open your email; this photo you send will then be placed in a "m4w" ad, placed to an audience of
women, and used to attract more pictures of
women which may be placed in other "w4m" ads with pictures to attract more men's responses. Conspiracy theorists believe that when the number of photos available to spamhook builders approaches Avagadro's Number then the universe will onto Motorola's original 68000
computer chip.
5. made universally
popular on Craigslist, where the latent spamhook lurks: this spamhook receives your response for a date, but waits to respond until the community "spamflags" the post down, so you are
never exactly sure which ad or why generated the
spam.
6. professional spamhooks
never include your original message in their spamming reply, thereby adding more confusion and resulting camouflage to the process.
7. spamhooks are central to the Craigslist business model, and indeed, the Craigslist owners own various porn/spamming entities that are guaranteed a market because of the existence of Craigslist.
Spam is not a problem on Craigslist. Rather, Craigslist exists BECAUSE of
spam.
Friend #1 surfing the net: "Hey, look at this amazing babe here on Craigslist."
Friend #2: "Is she fat? Is she a single
mother?"
Friend #1: "No."
Friend #2: "
Don't even bother: she's a spamhook."
Friend #1: "Damn, and she likes showing her
tits too."
