Since the spamvertorials mentioned were published in The Atlantic, it reminded me of something in one of PG's essays earlier this year: http://www.paulgraham.c

Since the spamvertorials mentioned were published in The Atlantic, it reminded me of something in one of PG's essays earlier this year: http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html "The Refragmentation" January 2016 >"But when I went looking for alternatives to fill this void, I found practically nothing. There was no Internet then. The only place to look was in the chain bookstore in our local shopping mall. [9] There I found a copy of The Atlantic. I wish I could say it became a gateway into a wider world, but in fact I found it boring and incomprehensible. Like a kid tasting whisky for the first time and pretending to like it, I preserved that magazine as carefully as if it had been a book. I'm sure I still have it somewhere. But though it was evidence that there was, somewhere, a world that wasn't red delicious, I didn't find it till college."