Thursday, March 11, 2010

Who are you people??!

You may have noticed, if you are a commenter on the blog, that I have recently made the switch from open comments for everyone, to moderation. I resisted this switch mostly because I want everyone to feel welcome to comment, however my friendliness was taken advantage of and unfortunately comment moderation, unless something changes will be the wave of the future. A few months back I began to notice an increase of comments, something that greatly excited my comment loving heart, but my excitement soon transformed into disappointment and disgust. Rather than comments from my friends, family and other bloggers, spam comments were overtaking regular comments two to one. At first they were innocent enough, not advertising anything, just strange and foreign sounding:

It was rather interesting for me to read that article. Thanx for it. I like such topics and everything that is connected to them. I would like to read a bit more on that blog soon.

Anonymous

I got several like this, almost identical, sometimes a few words were different. What threw me off about these comments were that they were made on posts where this comment seemed inappropriate. This particular one was found on the post about my grandmother being ill in the hospital. But it didn't try and sell anything, it didn't link back to another website, so I didn't really have any reason not to allow it be seen.

But lately the comments have moved from peculiar to creepy or just beyond weird:

My Girl friend just broke up with me and I have uploaded every nude PIC I have of her to the net. Just go to (link) Enjoy!

This is a comment that has been increasing in frequency in my comment box along with another comments that doesn't even pretend to be a real person, instead it just lists links to different Viagra and other such websites. The blog posts with the most comment spam frequency are "Want a Guille Suit? I'm your man!" and The woebegone story of the gingerbread house, which as far as I can tell, don't receive more traffic than other posts. Why these posts? What is it about these posts that attract spammers. Is it the sexuality of the gingerbread house because we all know that there is nothing mores sensual than the family Christmas activity of making houses with icing and graham crackers. And of course the guile suit that looks like a furry gorilla could be likened to lingerie.

So this is my question, why do spammers think that leaving bizarre messages in my comment box will bring traffic to their sites? How can they think this method would be effective in the least? As far as I can tell, people don't go looking through my comments clicking on any link they see, especially considering the audience I cater to and that these posts are old and are no longer on the main page.

Who are you people?
And why are you wasting my time and yours?

And if you are going to fill my comments with spam, can't you at least get an effective advertising campaign? Being a communication major, seeing such ineffective marketing irks me even if it's just nonsense porn spam. If your going to be an annoying bloodsucker of all that is whole and good in this world, can't you at least go about it in an intelligent way? Or is that too much to ask?

If you know me, you know that I am generally a positive person, and hate leaving a post on a negative thought. So I will leave with a thank you. Thank you to all of my readers, and thank you to all of my commentors who counterbalance the absurdity of the spammers. It is always nice to hear your thoughts and encouragements, they really make our day.

4 comments:

Elisabeth said...

I know, right! It seems to me that spammers could be a little more clever...

EleanorBraun said...

Spammers and trolls are so pathetic that leaving stupid spam or troll turd is what passes for a life for them. Just feel sorry for them, and get on with your wonderful life.

Eleanor

Jane said...

That started happening on my blog too. Turning on word verification seems to have fixed it for now. Weirdly, Wordpress' spam filter thinks I'm a spammer and usually blocks my comments unless someone specifically enables me.

Karen Deborah said...

Wow you have had a lot! Having the word verification on eliminates a good bit. Quite a few of the bloggers I read and myself tried to turn it off because it is a hassle. Spam began hitting all of us so we turned it back on. Some other ways you get that junk is by word searches. Using the word porn, will get hits. To disguise it you can remove some vowels. p*rn and your readers will understand but you will not be on some jerks word search. There are always people who want to ruin a good thing. But blogging is really fun so just perservere on!