It came by back in September, my first piece of autograph spam:
MR
Professor of Linguistics, Stanford University
Arnold M. Zwicky
Guggenheim Fellowships
.
Good morning
My name is Andrzej Migdalek.
I am a collector of autographs for 20 years.
I collect autographs of famous and popular with the world of politics, culture, science and sport from around the world.
In my collection I have over 6 thousand of the original autographs.
I kindly ask for an autograph.
An autograph would be an honor for me.
A heartfelt greeting from Polish.
Yours sincerely:
Andrzej Migdalek.
Below I’ve included your postal address:
.
Andrzej Migdalek
ul. 1000-lecia 22/6/1
41-933 Bytom
Poland
A few words about the linguistic aspects of the message, then some about autograph spam.
Some carryovers from Polish or German to unidiomatic English:
Mr. Professor of Linguistics [cf. German Herr Professor]
I am a collector of autographs for 20 years. [English: I have been …]
autographs of famous and popular [autographs of the famous and popular or autographs of famous and popular people]
autographs … with the world of politics, culture, … [from the world … ]
over 6 thousand of the original autographs [over 6 thousand original autographs]
heartfelt greeting from Polish [? from Poland]
I’ve included your postal address [my postal address for you]
Puzzled, I searched around and found Leigh Purtill’s author blog from 2009, where she described a similar request from “fans” in Germany and her discovery that Piotr Haase had sent the exact same letter to tons of people. She wondered:
Now, what the heck…is there an autograph scam out there I don’t know about? Is there something you can do with autographs of people who are not exactly household names? After all, if you follow the trail of these blogs the “fans” are posting on or to whom they are emailing their letters, you will discover the people they are asking are only semi-well-known (I’m speaking mostly for myself here), so what gives? What’s the deal?
(Commenters cited requests from Piotr Haase (Poland), Graydon Wall (U.K.), and other people from Germany, China, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.)
At first, some of her commenters considered the possibility that this was part of an identity theft scheme, but the consensus was (I think correctly) that the collectors were assembling banks of autographs from people who might some day become famous enough that their autographs could be sold or traded. Purtill and I (and others who reported similar experiences) are maybe C- or D- list celebrities, so we’re easily flattered.
Here’s autograph hounding in one of its more traditional forms, as described by pornstar Jack Wrangler in his (auto)biography The Jack Wrangler Story, p. 130:
A few quick notes about autograph seekers, now that I’ve become a jaded recipient of that kind of flattery: They’re always the same people. They always hit the current hit shows, and they seem to have no discernible means of support. They always hand you a three-by-five card to sign–just your name, no message. Because, you see, they trade them, and I guess in some instances sell them. These people are not necessarily fans. Often they don’t have any idea who the hell you are. You know you’ve been spotted; you smile warmly; they rush up to you breathlessly. Your hand is poised and ready. Then they hit you with “Are you anybody?” Pop goes the balloon. Their singular aim in life is to build the biggest autograph collection in the world, so they keep coming back with their damned three-by-five cards, which they use for leverage: “I’ll give you ten Jack Wranglers for one John Travolta.”
January 16, 2011 at 1:22 pm |
My guess would be that collected signatures could be used for identity theft purposes—banking transactions, printing fake identity cards, etc.
January 16, 2011 at 3:29 pm |
My feeling is that most people who give out autographs don’t sign their names there the same way that they do checks, and what-not. Plus, would a signature really be enough?
February 18, 2011 at 11:15 pm |
I love your dissection of his letter! Perhaps if he got the grammar right, we’d take him a little more seriously. Cheers~
July 4, 2012 at 9:40 am |
That makes sense. I have a family member who is a relatively minor elected federal official. They get requests like this from time to time, so it’s interesting to read what these people may actually be pursuing.
October 1, 2012 at 8:59 pm |
I also got that spam. Perhaps it is just a scheme to tease someone: Make hundreds of people send him unwanted autographs which fill up the mailbox. It is easy to create a gmail account under the name of someone else, as many people do not have one under their own name and therefore the name is free.
October 16, 2016 at 11:01 pm |
[…] In most of the posts and comments I read, people couldn’t really come up with a motive for all the autograph request spamming. The most likely reason I found, though, comes from Arnold Zwicky’s blog: […]