From a spam comment left for my post on how to e-mail a professor:
I precisely needed to appreciate you all over again. I’m not certain what I might have sorted out without those pointers provided by you on this subject. Previously it was a frightful dilemma for me personally, but taking a look at the very specialized strategy you processed it made me to weep for delight. I am grateful for the information and even pray you comprehend what a great job you happen to be providing training some other people through your blog post. Most probably you’ve never got to know any of us.No, because I never click on the skeevy URLs that end such comments.
A Google search for “a frightful dilemma for me personally” returns 28,600 results, with many variations:
It had been a frightful dilemma for me personally, however, being able to see this specialized mode you handled it forced me to weep for gladness.I cannot claim to jump for joy (or leap over contentment), but I do I take perverse pleasure in reading such stuff before deleting. O brave new world, that has such spammers in it.
It previously was a frightful dilemma for me personally, but noticing the very skilled avenue you resolved it made me to leap for gladness.
It previously was a frightful dilemma for me personally, however, taking note of a new expert mode you managed the issue made me to leap over contentment.
It was a frightful dilemma for me personally, however, understanding the specialised manner you solved the issue made me to jump for joy.
Related reading
All spam-themed posts (Pinboard)
comments: 8
I have considered turning off my blog's word-verification because I miss some of these adorable spam comments.
But not enough to deal with the nonadorable kind.
Hm... your word-verification is turned on--how come you still get spam?
That’s a good question. My guess is that these comments are from people making a pittance by leaving comments. It surprises me that even with comment moderation, they leave comments instead of going elsewhere. When I have the verification off, I get dozens and dozens of spam comments a day, and it’s really dispiriting.
Wow. Weird. Sort of like gold farming--you know?
(I know of it from a Cory Doctorow--like, in this interview:
http://www.ttbook.org/book/transcript/transcript-cory-doctorow-win.)
From Wikipedia:
"Gold farming is playing a massively multiplayer online game to acquire in-game currency that other players purchase in exchange for real-world money.[1][2] People in China and in other developing nations have held full-time employment as gold farmers."
Yes. I was thinking of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk services (though I can’t imagine that Amazon would allow spammers to contract). I think there must be people to do the word-verification, or I’d get many more of these comments.
Funny connection: Cory Doctorow once posted at Boing Boing about these formulaic spam compliments.
This particular piece truly did switch the light on for me as far as this specific topic goes.
:)
Thank you, Fresca! I was hoping to hear something like that. :)
I still wonder if there is any evidence that people make any money from spam. I mean hard evidence, not anecdotal. Maybe they are all spamming because they think someone is making money, unfortunately just not them?
It's like 'crowd estimates' that you hear about after events. They are just guessing, based on previous guesses. Not really hard evidence.
So much of it is about driving search traffic to sites by planting links. From what I’ve read, it can be very profitable, though not of course for the person doing the labor of pasting in comments.
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