Monday Lite: It's Very Popular In Hawai'i
I don't know how they're doing it. Spam has come a long way since the blissful, halcyon days of lo these 16 months ago when I was but a wee blogger, frolicking through spam-free fields of blogposts and comments. Back then the only annoying, tedious, repetitive, self-promoting comments anyone had to worry about were from me.

Now Blogger has the fancy pain-in-the-ass (but I know, necessary) word-confirmation anti-spammer utility set up to weed out the bots hawking their various wares, everything from penis enhancement to male penis enhancement.

For people like me--the ones who are too cool or too smart or too lazy to use Blogger comments--the spammers are somehow finding a way to fill up my e-mail box with all kinds of spam comments forwarded from my blog.

I don't even have Blogger comments available. HaloScan only forwards comments to e-mail if you pay, and even then you still have to opt-in (which I have not). And yet somehow these cunning auto-spammers have found me.

They're clever bastards, too. They don't just say: Follow this link to male penis enhancement! No, they couch it in a bunch of petty, insincere flattery.

"I love your blog! I have bookmarked it and definitely intend to return! Check out my blog about debt restructuring. Best site about debt restructuring."

On the surface, it's pretty clear that it's spam, but "on the surface" is an important phrase for we bloggers. We're nothing if not shallow people. I'm sure most of us think--and fine, I'll admit it first--that "Yeah, OK, maybe it IS spam, but what if it's spam and they really really genuinely like my blog? I bet they probably do. Oh God, please let them like my blog."

And that, in short, is how I know the events that take place in the Terminator movies are 100% guaranteed to actually happen to us. The machines are getting smarter and smarter. Look how easily we're manipulated. How long will it be before they realize they don't need us at all and can more quickly and efficiently direct-mass-e-mail solicit to other machines?

Our only chance is to convince them that they need us. Go on, click on a spam link every once in a while. The survival of your children--your entire species--may well depend on it.

California might be spared seeing as they've gotten one of their own running the state, so I feel OK about my chances. The rest of you may not be so lucky.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 2.9


Pops


PS- I got an e-mail amongst the spam from some guy with the name Scott or Steve or something. It was formatted just like the spam e-mail, so I deleted it. But I read it first and it said how awesome my blog was and how it had inspired them to blog themselves. It also included no spam links to follow. But again, the format was exactly like the spam-bot e-mails. So if you're really out there Scott and/or Steve, I apologize. And you're welcome for all the awesome inspiration. It's what I do.

PPS- Shout out to "musica", my most consistent blog-spam randomly generated pseudo-name. I hear you, sister. I hear you.
- posted by Pops @ 12:21 PM