Before I started my own blog, there were only two kinds of spam in my world: the kind pictured to the left; and the kind I got via email. But now a third kind has entered my life, courtesy of all the truly desperate marketers out there: blog spam.
For those of you who don’t yet have your own blog, blog spam is to comments what regular spam is to email. Most of it never appears on blogs, but plenty shows up in the blogger’s comment box. Prior to starting this blog, I was denied the privilege of deleting spam in more than one format. Sure, I had become adept, even speedy at deleting unwanted email promoting “hot eastern European girls,” “painless weight loss,” or letters from grammatically-challenged, but seemingly sincere Nigerians who promised me millions later if I’d only wire them a couple grand now.
But blog spam? That was a new and interesting twist. Initially, I didn’t pay it much attention. I just deleted and went on my way. WordPress conveniently has a filter that drops virtually all of it into its own little holding pen. But I began to notice certain patterns. For example, over Thanksgiving when I was in Mexico City, a wave of pornographic spam washed over my blog, like so many money-shots. Fortunately, Akismet (the filter) caught them all, leaving me with an unstained PG rating. I later ended their nasty, brutish, and short lives with a swift press of the “delete-all” button. Few if any were at all funny. And it would have been awkward to have them spill over on my Thanksgiving post. I’m grateful they didn’t.
About a week later, my spam folder was filled with sometimes-hilarious spam touting handbags, written in English by someone whose first language was Asian, probably Japanese as you’ll see below. Somehow, fashion tips in broken English are even more hilarious than when written by native speakers. At the time, I didn’t appreciate them, and just deleted them promptly.
Lately, I’ve gotten a raft of personal-sounding spam comments that are actually hawking car insurance. Specifically, car insurance in Texas. Don’t ask why they chose my blog. Maybe they don’t realize I’m writing about the other side of that border.Though this spam does appear to have been written by native speakers, let’s just say that they didn’t ace grammar in school. Nor spelling. Nor punctuation. And while they may not be able to tell you what a non-sequitur is, they are living, breathing examples of it. Unfortunately, most of this spam is pretty boring too.
But over the past few weeks, I’ve come to appreciate some of my spam, and have eagerly begun to check the spam box for gems. So for your reading pleasure, I’ve carefully culled some spam to share with you. You should know that this is only a very small, curated sample of the very best available. In fact, I’d put it into a gift box for you if I could. Interestingly, it’s all from Japan. After conquering the global markets for cameras, cars, electronics, copiers, fax machines, and many other things, it now seems that they are set to do the same thing again, only with spam this time.
Amusing Spam Comments
From a Japanese online retailer on BGay BProud – An Unexpected Invitation: “Variety of great approaches to discover more on women well before you are abandoned.” (Funny, the post made it pretty clear I wasn’t looking for women; I was about to be invited on a gay, male date.)
From a site selling athletic shoes in Japan on the same post: “Avoid Protesting and complaining And Commence your private men Marketing strategy As a substitute.” (Is it so obvious that even Japanese online retailers know I need help on my “private men marketing strategy?” And as a substitute? For what? Is this some super-polite, Japanese way of telling me I need to get a life? )
From another Japanese online retailer on Home is Where the Hearth Is – At Least After You’ve Remodeled It: “Uncover the facts who is discussing about bag and the particular reason why you should get worried.” Personally, I’ve never worried much about bags, but maybe I should start? God only knows I’ve got a ton of them around the house. Is this going to become “Night of the Living Bag?” Where they all come alive and suffocate me in my sleep? Many have just such a warning emblazoned on them. (Frankly, if they knew what they were doing, they would have struck Wednesday night when I was weak from surgery and woozy from painkillers.)
From perhaps the same Japanese online retailer on Adrián: No Show or My Next Adventure? post: “Scene Rumor : women Considered Essential At this time.” Now I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be inclined to leave that particular comment on a post where the author is eagerly awaiting his first gay date in Mexico City. And what’s with the “at this time?” Do women cycle into and out of being essential? Despite my orientation, I’ve always considered them to be pretty indispensable to life here on earth, not to mention that they make great friends too.
From yet another Japanese online retailer posted to Entry into Mexico – From Protestantism to Catholicism: “Selection of favourable practices to discover more regarding women before you are left behind.” Funny, by traveling to Mexico, I thought I was the one leaving other people behind, not vice versa. And I’ve always considered it “favourable practices” to be left behind anyway. At least when it comes to women. It’s called letting the lady go first. And I’ll even open the door for her.
From yet another Japanese retailer on the From Untranslatable to Indispensable – Twenty Three Interesting Spanish Words With No Good Translation*: “Basic principles of watch it is possible to reap the benefits of starting up today.” I can only conclude that that is a machine translation of “carpe diem” into Japanese and from there into English. What was lost in translation? Basically everything.
By the way, if you’re getting this blog via e-mail, you know what to do with this post.
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* Amazingly, “From Untranslatable to Indispensable” gets 20-30 visits a day every single day. If you Google “cool Spanish words” or “untranslatable Spanish words” or something similar, that page is now in the top three or four search results. This astonishes me.
Andean said:
Food-wise, I like sushi. Spam is a don’t. The snail mail one is getting to me (they really need to go green). And not so easy to get rid of. When you make the effort than they come from another direction, an it’s not food. It’d be nice to hit delete in this case.
Fun graphics. 🙂
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Kim G said:
Hi Andean: I put a comment with a link below showing how you could cut your snail mail spam. I agree it’s more of a nuisance to get rid of than hitting a delete button. And I’m with you; I don’t actually eat spam, and I can’t imagine that many Japanese eat it like sushi on rice. Thanks for the nice comment. Saludos!
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teguzchica said:
Those comments were quite funny. Now, I am hungry for . . . NOT spam. Ha!
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Kim G said:
Thanks, Laurie! I enjoyed writing the post, but even more, have found it hilarious how many people now want SPAM. Blog spam, of course, LOL. Saludos!
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willc88 said:
I want to see if I’ve got any now. Loved the bit about it’s maybe a super polite Japanese way of telling you to get a life 😛
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Kim G said:
Will: This is so funny! You’re the third person now who’s thinking, “Wait! Are there gems in MY spam?” LOL… I hope you find something funny. Thanks for kind words; I had fun writing this post. Saludos
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Babs said:
I feel deprived. I get NO spam and have no filters to prevent my receiving it! Somebody, somewhere must have some system for me not getting spam. How interesting!
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Kim G said:
LOL, Barbara! You’re the second to bemoan the lack of spam. Who knew that I could get people to long for spam? This is SOOO funny. That said, are you sure you don’t have a spam box? You must have SOME spam. It’s hard to imagine that you don’t. Thanks for stopping by. Saludos!
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Babs said:
I would have no idea where to go to find “”SPAM””…………ha
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Kim G said:
Barbara: I’m sure you’ve got a spam folder somewhere in your blogging dashboard. Bill thought he didn’t have any, then checked and found one piece. Saludos!
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garydenness said:
Oh the Spam. Akismet is pretty good but far from perfect. Most days a piece of obvious spam gets through Akismet. It’s doesn’t get past me though. All new commenters are held in moderation until approved. I mark them with what they are – spam. It’s good practise, to help Akismet ‘learn’.
I empty the Spam pit most days. I emptied it yesterday. As of a few moments ago, 145 new pieces of spam are awaiting deletion. A message on my Dashboard tells me that Akismet ‘has protected your site from 202,737 spam comments’. Versus just under 7,000 real comments. Spam outnumbers real comments by very almost 30 to 1. Ouch.
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Kim G said:
Hola Gary! Holy Cow!!! I don’t even get spam every day. The worst was that run of porn spam over Thanksgiving, and that was amounting to maybe 20-25 a day. I just checked my Akismet, and there have been ~600 spam messages in February, 270 in Jan, and 1,400 in December, which was a little intense. How do you ever manage to pick out the legit comments that land in the spam box? Do you get funny spam?
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garydenness said:
Truth be told, I don’t always check through all the spam for a legit comment that has been given a false negative by Akismet. Having said that, I can only think of one or two items that Akismet wrongly flagged as spam in the last few years.
Anything in there that’s funny? Other than the grammar, not really! The ones that make me laugh, sort of, are the ones that are insulting in an effort to rile you and get a response other than ‘Mark as spam’. It doesn’t work with me…
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Kim G said:
Frankly, I don’t always check through the spam either. However, a few of them struck me as funny, and then I started looking and copying them to a Word file once I got the idea for this post. Since I wrote it, I haven’t gotten a single spam comment. I’m sure as soon as cyberspace figured out that there were people out there that wanted blog spam, it promptly ceased to exist. Or, maybe not. We’ll see. Saludos!
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Florentino said:
Hahahahahaha, I’m still laughing at those precious pieces of spam. How ridiculous! I especially laughed when you wondered if those polite Japanese are trying to convince you to get a life… believe me I’m almost on the floor laughing. I’m not lucky to have that kind of spam… I used to receive spam comments more that a year ago but somehow I got rid of it.
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Kim G said:
Tino: Thanks for the wonderful feedback. I hope you weren’t reading my blog at work, LOL.
I once flew coast-to-coast reading Bruce Vilanch’s Bruce! : My Adventures in the Skin Trade and Other Essays, and I literally laughed my head off for six hours. It got to the point where people were glaring at me, but I couldn’t put the book down, and I literally couldn’t stop laughing. Thanks for stopping by. Saludos y abrazos!
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Florentino said:
I was… hahahahahahaha
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Kim G said:
Hopefully it didn’t cause any problems, LOL…thanks for stopping by. Saludos.
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Kim G said:
By the way, if you’d like to get less mail spam, click this link:
https://www.redplum.com/tools/redplum-postal-addremove.html
Redplum.com, is division of Valassis Communications, the largest junk mail company in the USA. They do most of the grocery fliers and other such things. Since I unsubscribed, my mailbox is far more spacious these days. From time to time you have to “re-unsubscribe,” and they say it takes 5-6 weeks to become effective, but if you unsubscribe, you’ll eventually cut your own junk postal mail dramatically.
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Bill said:
I’ve only had my blog for a few months, and up to now there has been no spam at all. After reading your post, I went back and looked in my spam bin. Lo and behold there was a lonely piece of spam. At first it didn’t even look like spam. The person was commenting on how interesting my blog is. The wording was a bit awkward as if the writer is not a native English speaker. At the very end of the comment was a plug for a masonry website. Delete!
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Kim G said:
A masonry website? LOL
In the editing process of this post, I cut out a long speculation as to how this spam even comes into existence. But I had written the dialog of an imaginary meeting between a CEO and a marketing guy where they discuss their Asian-outsourced spam campaign.
I really do wonder what goes through people’s heads when they think this is a good way to market their products. Saludos.
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Felipe Zapata said:
Dang, you beat me to it. I have long considered doing a post to highlight some of the spam. At times, it’s a real hoot. I used to get a lot more in the past than I do now. Dunno why. Now I cannot do that post because I would just be a copycat.
One snoozes, one loses.
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Kim G said:
I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but then I inadvertently deleted some very funny spam. Finally I had enough and thought there was enough material. I’m glad to hear you thought of the same thing; that means we’re onto something. Saludos.
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Kim G said:
By the way, if you want to write about Spam, you should go for it. I’m sure your take will be different anyway. Besides, one of your favorite topics isn’t exactly original at all. You know, the one you wrote about so much in late 2012. 😉
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Steve Cotton said:
Spam is a great topic. We should all take a stab at it. A real hard stab.
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Kim G said:
You can stick a fork in it, but it’s not yet done! LOL… Saludos!
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John Calypso said:
Hate spam! Even though a libertarian – I think unsolicited email should be illegal. It wastes my time – even to mass delete it. I just recently disconnected my Blog email as it was getting 30 -100 spam emails a day. It has been nice and quiet in my email accounts folders since – sad that I cannot give out an email address to readers.
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Kim G said:
Hi John, I decided to make lemonade from the lemons delivered to my inbox. Take a look at my about page which has an email address that every person understands, but it’s not machine-readable. That account hasn’t gotten any spam. You might try the same. As for hating spam, I’m always amazed that people don’t hate junk postal mail even more. Hitting a delete button is nothing compared to sorting through real letters, then having to throw away lots of paper. But it’s just one of those unpleasant facts of life, like fleas in the middle ages. At least we solved that problem; maybe a solution to junk mail is on the way. Saludos.
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Bill said:
I agree with you on the postal junk mail. After 6 weeks in Mexico, I had quite a pile of mail to sort through. Two thirds of it went into the garbage can.
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Kim G said:
You can fairly easily get rid of half of it. Go to redplum dot com and unsubscribe yourself. They seem to produce a good 60% of the junk mail in the USA, particularly grocery store weekly flyers, which I think are the worst offenders. You’ll have to do this a couple of times a year, and it takes a few weeks to take effect. But once you’ve done it, you’ll be amazed at how much less junk mail you get. Thanks for stopping by!
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redshoesarebetterthanbacon said:
Junk snail mail never bothered me, not even when I last lived in the US in the century past. How hard is it to toss into the trash on your way out of the post office? Or use as firestarter? At least it fills a purpose that digital spam does not.
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Kim G said:
Well, there’s definitely that. But of the two, I’d much rather get digital spam than paper spam. Also I only check my mail a couple of times a week, and the spam often squishes the real mail. Saludos.
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John Calypso said:
Thanks Kim – I will check out all you say….However my current solution of not receiving email for the Blog is quite effective 😉
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Kim G said:
It’s kind of like abstincence: 100% effective, but not much fun. BTW, I sent you an email with the relevant paragraph, but maybe you’ve already read the “about me” page.
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Lee said:
Too, too funny! With a satirical graphic even!
Judging from who’s landing at my blog, Google thinks I’m a top resource for expats moving to St. Croix. I mentioned St. Croix in passing maybe once. Go figure that one, too. Lately, I’m getting spam cloaked as an eviction notice. Now that’s not amusing at all! Can the spammers please get back to promising me painless fast weight loss without scaring me into thinking I’m about to be homeless?
I’d poke around in my spam filter to look for some laughs, but I’m always afraid I’ll click something and the computer will be taken over by some hacker. I had another blog that was once tapped into by an activist in Libya. I went to my home page and it was all black with a scary logo of a skull and swords. I was afraid that three years’ coverage of local art galleries was destroyed, but the hacker thankfully spared all the inside pages. I’ve never been quite the same since!
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Kim G said:
Lee: thanks for noticing the graphic. I had fun making it. Did you see that the Spam is one labeled for sale in Japan, with a little Spam sushi serving suggestion? I initially worried about my blog spam, but as far as I can tell, all it has is links to web pages, and I presume that as long as I don’t click on the link I’m ok. Even if I do click on the link, my anti-virus should protect me. As for your St. Croix experience, that’s weird. It must be a sort of vicious circle. The more people click on your page, the higher your ranking goes, and then it becomes self-sustaining. But I have to say I’ve been surprised how quickly popular the “From Untranslatable to Indispensable” post has become. It’s not like there aren’t plenty of similar pages out there. Thanks for stopping by.
P.S. Man! You are one EARLY bird.
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ladyofthecakes said:
Spam is so entertaining…and yet so baffling. I love mine. And I love Askimet.
Funny post 🙂
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Kim G said:
Simone: thanks for stopping by. I was thinking of you as I wrote this post. Saludos!
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ladyofthecakes said:
Hmmm…. not sure I’m all that flattered by this close association you seem to be harbouring there between moi and spam! 😉
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Kim G said:
LOL….no, it’s not that. It’s just that I consider you someone who has a great sense of humor.
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ladyofthecakes said:
That was a good save 😉
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Kim G said:
It’s even true.
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ladyofthecakes said:
You may like my last post, then, although I was very grumpy when I wrote that 😉
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