July 30th, 2012
Silly spam comments you don’t have to read
By Ruth E. Thaler-Carter
© Ruth E. Thaler-Carter
There’s one good thing about spam: It’s often so totally ridiculous, badly written, inappropriate and obvious that it generates a good laugh. Such is the case with many – at times, most – of the comments that people try to post here. (Well, they may not be actual people; “they” might be robots or other non-human content generators of some sort.) Our colleagues and real readers will be glad to know that comments at the SPJ blog are moderated, so you don’t have to see the stupid stuff that people attempt to post here. (I know some people may think of moderation as censorship, but trust me, friends – you really don’t want to see some of this junk!)
Just a few examples of items checked and deleted in one half-hour span – and there were several copies of each of these, in every one of our discussions:
“Fake paycheck”
“you are not really a lot more smartly-liked than you might be now”
“Hey I loves the wonderful blog many thanks and please continue…”
“Days ago a change in Google search engine platform make anonymous public proxies, almost useless.”
“Cottage Cheese Diet Blog…”
“puppies…”
“Free Online Games billiards !”
There have been others that were even dumber, and sometimes just the “sender’s” name or URL is even more laughable than the message itself.
I often wonder about the purpose of such attempted posts. They’re so patently spam that I can’t imagine anyone letting them appear on any kind of blog, whether personal or professional, but they must be worth something for people (or ‘bots) to invest time and effort into sending them. Letting their site names and URLs see the light of day must have some value.
Now if only SPJ colleagues would be as active in “populating” our blog with worthwhile comments as the spammers try to be with nonsense!