Over on another blog, I noted that Netflix’s new DVD name Qwikster sounded familiar. I got some support requests and a small spam run, including this comment:
I keep getting these creepy late-night phone calls from the CEO of Netflix saying that no one else is ever going to love me like he does.
Why do I get the feeling that someone read Woot’s parody of the post?
Opened up a spam trap I’d forgotten about and found ~40 copies of some — well, I hesitate to call it a newsletter, but it was a long collection of headlines, summaries, and links to news items and dubious reference sites that looked like someone had taken a few dozen conspiracy theories, put them into a blender, and then splattered them onto the page like Jackson Pollack.
At least, I want to believe it’s some horribly-mangled computer-generated aggregation…but it wouldn’t surprise me if it turns out to be someone’s serious attempt to create a newsletter without being able to write a coherent sentence.
I saw a license plate today that read,
I ♥ SPAM
I was a little surprised, but then I saw the “Made in Hawaii” plate holder and realized they were talking about the lunch meat.
*whew!*
In clearing out my spam folder today, I found the following message:
Bad Link on hyperborea.org
Dear webmaster,
There was a link that didn’t work for me on this page of your website, http://www.hyperborea.org/flash/flashpoint.html. It points to a Constitution Day page that doesn’t seem to be there any more, [link removed].
We published a great resource on the U.S. Constitution Day on Online Law School.Net: [link removed]. It would make a great addition to your resources and replacement for the page that no longer works.
Sincerely,
Maddie Bryant
[email removed]
On the surface, it sounds like a reasonable message. If you’ve got a broken link, then you want to know, and hey, if they’ve got an alternative, so much the better, right?
But here’s the thing: The broken link isn’t on the page. I don’t think I link to that page anywhere on my site. There is a reference to the 22nd Amendment, but not to anything about Constitution Day.
In short, it’s another form of link swap spam based on automatic keyword matches with no real intelligence to it.
That’s not really something I want to be linking to.
I’ve been seeing a lot of those “I just found your blog by searching and it’s the best thing since sliced bread” comment spams lately, some even slipping through Akismet. But this one was just hilarious in its unreadability:
Virtuous what I used to be in search of and quite thoroughgoing as floor. Many thanks for placard this, I noticed a yoke diverse associated posts but yours was the optimum thus far. I outlook it stays updated, adore worry.
