What Makes Me Laugh

Right now I have nine spam comments on my blog just sitting here, waiting for me to delete them.

The thing about comments generated by spammers (people who don’t actually read your blog, but want others to click on a link from their comment to an advertisement for genital herpes medication – or some other stupid product)   is that they can be harder to sort out than spam e-mail.

For e-mail users, if you can’t recognize the fraud tempting you to buy herbal Viagra, or look at “photos of me”, or provide your bank account information because you won a Nigerian lottery you never entered, then your genetic code has suffered some Darwinian maladaptation.

Comment spam, however, is a different beast. For instance, here’s a frequent spam comment:

“Hey… This is the second time I have visited your blog and I really enjoy your work. Please keep us updated! Thanks!”

Well, how nice of this person. A complete stranger has visited my blog twice, and has said good things! I’m flattered.

Turns out, the person who commented (Ashley Madison) is probably not enjoying my blog. In fact, the description of her website is pretty terrifying:

“ The website called “Ashley Madison” can be a little deceiving and is not as obvious and upfront as most discreet affair sites like Lonelywivesaffairs.com. The Ashley Madison foundation has been using the name strategically to target mostly male audiences who wish to have an affair outside of marriage. Their motto reads: ‘Life is short, have an affair.’”

Life is short, have an affair? Now there is a quotable quote.

Here’s another spam comment:

“In truth, immediately i didn’t understand the essence. But after re-reading all at once became clear.”

In truth, this one is not so flattering. You really don’t want your readers to “not understand the essence” of your writing or have to re-read  your post to get it.

This guy, named “Crasty” is trying to sell generic Viagra. His site features a  photo of a guy in a business suit, leaning over another guy in a business suit, holding a pill in front of his face. Hmm…

I must admit, I fell for the following comment when I first started blogging because it seemed so personal:

“I’m so jealous of your blog! I can never get mine to function or look like yours. Good work though…Keep it up!”

Wow! Someone is jealous of me? Little old me? I didn’t even think it looked that good. How nice of her.

Yeah, it would have been really nice if she wasn’t trying to sell a get-rich-by-working-from-home scheme on her website.

Almost all of my spam is automatically filtered for me through Wordpress, but a few sneak by them into my e-mail, and my ego picks up for a few seconds when I read ones like, “Great article! When are you going to write more about this?”

And I think, “Soon very soon, as soon as I buy Cipro.”

Tags: blogging, humor, spam

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 6:21 pm and is filed under Absurdly True Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.