Insulting spam
WordPress, the host site for this blog, tells me that its software has removed a total of 150,858 spam comments from the posts here. That means that spam comments account for over 90 per cent of all comments submitted. Mostly these are attempts to get the reader (if it got as far as the reader) to click on various commercial (and sometimes unsavoury) links, obscured by text that typically purports to praise the quality of the blog, often in incomprehensible ways (not helped, I suspect, by computer translation); as in this case:
‘Nice answers in return of this issue with firm arguments and describing all about that.’
Sure. But sometimes you get something different, and today an enterprising spammer decided that insulting me might pay dividends. This was his attempted comment:
‘The next time I read a blog, I hope that it doesn’t disappoint me just as much as this one. I mean, I know it was my choice to read, but I actually believed you would have something useful to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something that you could fix if you weren’t too busy looking for attention.’
Ah, who knows, maybe he’s right. He wants you to click on the site of an online therapist, by the way.
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University Blog 
April 3, 2013 at 8:53 am
With the recent occurrence where the spammers had their routes reverse tracked. It seems the spam on blogs isn’t so benign and that the blog hosts aren’t doing half enough.
The major spammers can take a section of ones machine and then use it as part of their system. The problem is if the files name looks like system files you have no way of seeing them never mind blocking them.
Remember on WP such spam is rarely on new posts but on stuff days weeks and sometimes months old. If it were face value sales&advertising it would be totally current. And why go to such efforts to hide the machine nature to get under filters and then place the link 15 months ago.
Granted WP has blocking features which prevents comment on post. But unless you know about the one that blocks comment older than a set period you might have a blog nothing more than a tentacle of some spammers hosting strategy.
Frankly, given how we’re designed if we aren’t looking for attention tiz then something’s wrong with the wiring.
April 3, 2013 at 9:25 am
I was recently graced that with spam as well. In my case the attempted link was nothing so thematically appropriate, just one of the usual Dutch porn sites.
April 3, 2013 at 12:51 pm
You wrote, “spam comments account for over 90 per cent of all comments submitted.”
You elaborated, “Mostly these are attempts to get the reader (if it got as far as the reader) to click on various commercial (and sometimes unsavoury) links, obscured by text that typically purports to praise the quality of the blog, often in incomprehensible ways”.
The suggestion that the comments, amounting to less than ten percent of the total volume, that you allow to linger are qualitatively different from the description of spam in your elaboration is interesting. Is the key to the difference really in just the word “commercial”?
April 3, 2013 at 10:59 pm
No – the spam is almost always totally generic and unconnected in any way with the subject of the post. Spammers also seem to have a particular (and strange) liking for the word ‘weblog’ (rather than ‘blog’).
April 3, 2013 at 1:52 pm
Not sure about the attention seeking aspect mentioned by the spammer, however If one blogs, one has to be at least a little narcissistic. You’re putting your words, advice, insight and photos out there because you believe that others will want to read them. Personally, I don’t think there is anything wrong with that, however some media scholarship does speak, in the usual alarmist tone of a ‘Narcissism Epidemic’ linked to social media: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/the-internet-narcissism-epidemic/274336/
Maybe the online therapist can helps us all 🙂
April 3, 2013 at 8:10 pm
Not sure why these spammers are wasting their resources on blogs on HE that attract very few readers!
April 3, 2013 at 10:33 pm
So why are you writing a comment here for these very few readers?
April 4, 2013 at 9:01 am
narcisissm 🙂
April 4, 2013 at 2:44 pm
Twiddle Dee for the Twiddle Dum! Any mind of your own? What a shame!
April 4, 2013 at 3:52 pm
Should be Tweedle Dee for the Tweedle Dum.
April 4, 2013 at 2:46 pm
Just to show how wrong you are every time!
April 4, 2013 at 3:29 pm
Every time! That’s quite an achievement! Most people are only wrong some of the time. You, Eddie, are only wrong most of the time. And I’m wrong every time! I shall definitely put that on my business card.
April 4, 2013 at 4:01 pm
I have not read anything you posted so far in your blog that shows you have understood Scotland HE environment, let alone the UK HE environment. It is not only me saying, but if you care to listen to your own wider RGU staff…..? BTW, these days, business cards are of no use. Reputation precedes. .
April 4, 2013 at 4:40 pm
Sadly ironic – and very telling of a certain type of online communication where anonimity allows people to spew bile – that a blog post entitled *insulting spam* has provoked insulting comments like the ones above.
April 4, 2013 at 4:53 pm
As though you did not insult! Holier than thou attitude always..