On the Entertainment Value of Spam

I keep vowing to get a plugin to more efficiently handle the spam that comes into the comment fields here on joepastry.com. It would certainly save me the ten or so minutes I spend every day scanning all the e-missives that come in for approval and deleting them manually. On the down side I’d lose out on a lot of good laughs. Granted most of them are of the sardonic variety, the how stupid they think I am? kind of laughs.

I emit those dark chuckles when I see spamsters trying to get around my spelling filters with emails that offer free “pron” twenty four hours a day. On the other hand these people may have simply read a few of my posts and understand all too well how consistent I am at spelling. I get tons emails from a guy who calls himself “Best Waterfilter” and many, many others from a young lady with the unfortunate name of “Cheap UGGboots.”

Yet there are far cleverer forms of spam that disguise themselves as legitimate comments, hoping to fly under the radar as just more argumentation. Usually they’re very short, from “Amy” or “Rudy” or someone, making simple declarations along the lines of “Amen brother!” or “You got that right!”

Other times you can tell somebody, somewhere has actually put some time and thought into what they’re writing. Case in point a delightful bit of attempted infiltration I got this morning which went like this:

Gary, as I said, mind your own business. And, by the way, I am not gay. I merely respect the rights of other human beings to live their lives as they see fit. Apparently that’s too much to ask for some people.

Somebody has clearly done their homework and is doing a great job of imitating the sort of thrust-and-riposte found on most blogs. Much, MUCH better than conventional attempts which normally go like this:

I have been browsing online more than three hours this day, but I never found an attention-grabbing information such as yours. It’s beautiful value is sufficient for me. In my view, if all bloggers made the just right content as you probably just did, the net would be a much more valued place.

It’s hard not to be flattered by that sort of effusive praise. Still I’ll give the award for top spammer to the first guy, who not only speaks English as his native tongue, he has a clear talent for dialogue. Would that he were writing novels instead of clogging up my software with more mumbo jumbo that will never see the light of day. Oh and by the way, Gary, I’m not gay either.