Spam Café

Now and then, I don a HAZMAT suit and dive into the spam bucket to see if anyone I know fell in. (I won’t name names, and I won’t always throw you a rope – kind of depends on the depth and stinkiness of the bucket on any given day.) I miss the days when spammers – sometimes – put forth a little creative effort. You know, the ones that could almost pass for human, and provided that little zing! of added challenge to our day, rather than provoking ennui and the urge to go flush the toilet.

There’s a special place in my heart for the spammers who are so technically inept that they buy their little spam spinner apps, install them, and forget to customize anything at all – then end up spewing MadLib-style spinner guts all over my spam bucket. It’s like choose your own adventure, but they just gave up and threw it all at my wall to see if anything would stick.

Nope.

For the amusement of my readers who don’t blog, here’s a sample:

{In my opinion|Personally|In my view}, if all {webmasters|site owners|website owners|web owners}
and bloggers made {just right|good|excellent} {content|content
material} as {you did|you probably did}, the {internet|net|web} {will be|shall be|might be|will
probably be|can be|will likely be} {much more|a lot more}
{useful|helpful} than ever before.|
Ahaa, its {nice|pleasant|good|fastidious} {discussion|conversation|dialogue} {regarding|concerning|about|on the topic of} this {article|post|piece of writing|paragraph} {here|at this
place} at this {blog|weblog|webpage|website|web site}, I have read all that, so {now|at this
time} me also commenting {here|at this place}.|

Except that it goes on for about three pages. Someone’s been stealing from the Thesaurus, again!

What’s on the Spam Café Menu Today?

“Hello admin, i’m regular reader of your blog. I noticed
that your site is outranked by many other websites in google’s search results.
You deserve to be in top-10. I know what can help you, search in google for:
Kelustu’s Tips Outsource The Work“

Apparently, this reader is trapped here by his fascination with the fact that I’m not consistently ranking on the front page of Google’s search results. This is entirely understandable if you’re searching for “Kelustu’s Tips Outsource The Work.” I will fix that with one post – this one – because I’m just that talented.

I love the subtext: “Dagnabit, you won’t let me post the link in comments, so go find it yourself!” So helpful this one wants to be. I wonder why random strangers are so concerned with my ranking in various search engines. I want to say, “I’m not worried about it. Why are you so obsessed with it?” Don’t they even realize that Pagerank is dead? Alexa would be king, you know, if not for the fact that it’s now a premium service of Amazon (and seriously pricey – not worth it for those of us on the Fortune 5000000). WordPress and StatCounter (both free) are still my go-to for geekery.

But here’s the thing that really puzzles me about this sort of spam: If you think I should outsource the work, Kelutsu’s Minion of Nefarious Advertising, why are you a regular reader of my blog?

https://twitter.com/HollyJahangiri/status/599238907754975232

By the way, you should totally follow (hashtag #FAD for “Follow Any Day”) @tehpet, and say I said so.

Next up, in the “How the @#$% Did They Know?” department, hystersisters for weight loss dropped this off:

Once our bodies gets rid of the long staying waste or toxins,
it’s really a lot easier for the body to accomplish
its process in reducing your weight. It’s the mental picture you’ve got of how you
think you peer to others. There are five things you need to think about to attain optimum health:
Lose weight, appropriate food choices options, exercise, give up smoking and moderate alcohol consumption.

So, in other words: Once we poop, we lose weight. In our heads, we think we look like shit, but apparently, we think our peers do, too. To be in good health – “optimum health,” which to me implies it’ll cure whatever else ails us, in addition to helping shed those pesky pounds – we need to keep thinking these FIVE things (leaves no room for stuff like calculus, so I’m down with that): “Lose weight! Make sure you’ve got options for appropriate food choices – like, if you’re hungry, there’s food! Exercise! Give up smoking! Moderate—” Wait a sec, before I agree to be a moderator, I wanna know: how big is this “alcohol consumption” group? Because I know what being a moderator entails… you almost had me, there! Next, they’re gonna demand free booze.

Bonus! More weight loss tips than you can shake a stick at!

During this era my body system weights have been getting yo-yo – rising
then down, or higher and down again. Introduce a new fruit or vegetable each day for
a down helping sizes and use an inferior plate. If you follow these 5 steps, you’ll
be putting yourself in the most beneficial position for fulfillment and they are virtually guaranteed to obtain results quickly and easily.

Just let me get the cracked stoneware out of hiding and put away the good china. This is the Era of Orthorexia. Grab your yo-yos and repeat after me: “Mr. Cauliflower, may I introduce to you Miss Plum? Rumors of her having done it in the drawing room with the young Cabbage over there, let alone a candlestick, are greatly exaggerated…but you could ask Colonel Mustard Greens, if you don’t believe me.”

Another #FAD rec:

Never ever be touching the ground because it is full of heavy metals. Instead of walking you should simply levitate forwards. #ItsAFact

— TheOffendedIndian (@TheOffendedIndi) April 25, 2015

In the “Slip me some cold hard cash with that flattery and I might kick the bouncer in the shins” department, we have:

I am extremely impressed with your writing skills as well as with the layout on your blog.

Is this a paid theme or did you customize it yourself?
Either way keep up the nice quality writing, it’s
rare to see a great blog like this one these days.

Is that a trophy in your pocket or are you just happy to spam me? Did they cleverly time this for right after the OWFI Contest Awards Banquet on purpose? Hey, I won something! It’s all good!

I won Second Place for “The #2 Pencil” in Flash Fiction!

Another #FAD recommendation: Check out @OWFI and rummage through their Twitter Lists for some excellent writers to follow.

Here’s a tip for Kelatsu’s Minions: When leaving panda-sized pigeon crap all over someone’s blog, don’t bother to preface your spammy links to online gambling, big pharma, forex (which until recently, I thought were condoms), vigrx (knock off blue pills, anyone?), Michael Kors handbags, Ugg boots (UGH!! you keep spelling things wrong!), or whatever, do not preface it with something as stupid as “Feel free to peruse my site…”

REALLY?? You couldn’t pay me to.