Comment spam is wildly entertaining.
Here’s something from Geralgora…
“what a poor grammar :)”
I love how he/she insults me and includes a smiley face as though that validates his/her statement.
It’s the equivalent of adding “no offense” before saying something you know is offensive to somebody.
I get some decidedly odd spam these days. I’m sure you do too. Any piece of art based on spam emails is likely to be a little risqué – so click through to this page at your own risk… this has been around for a while. I’m doing some spring cleaning of my queue of blog fodder…
Elliot Burford is producing a series of literal spam. Or something. You can get them as T-Shirts.
My awesome comment spam filter protects me (and you dear reader) from all sorts of online nastiness. Ads for drugs, the opportunity to lose weight quickly, and naked celebrities (sadly that phrase will probably produce a boost in hits – if you’re one of the people who arrived here googling “Naked Celebrities” then please visit your local church – or read this Mark Driscoll eBook). A lot of spam is encouraging and supportive. The spammer tells me they’ll be back regularly – and they often are. But some spam is just down right mean. Like this guy, Anthony Dip, who disagrees with me…
“In my opinion you are not right. Let’s discuss it. Write to me in PM, we will communicate.”
Strangely his disagreement was with the hard copy Wikipedia post, which was factual and almost completely sans editorial.
Some clever little cookie decided that “spam” was a label too ubiquitous to be applied to all junk email, and so bacn was born. It’s like bacon and is a lunchmeat enthused pun. Of sorts. It’s a catchall label used to describe solicited advertisements, newsletters and well targetted email campaigns.
Microsoft this week announced that something like 97% of all email traffic is spam. They don’t make the bacn distinction as far as I’m aware. But I do. So I’m choosing to allow spam comments that fit into the bacn category – like two shirt sites that commented on my last post about SnorgTees – that’s nice. It shows initiative. And NerdyShirts even offered a 10% discount.
You could buy this topical masterpiece…
Or an Eastery theme – this one’s called “The Last Supper“…
Rizzo Tees offered no discount – but proferred a link to their site claiming Snorg was an “inspiration”… here are some of their shirts. Starting with one particularly on topic…
I can relate. I lost 20 subscribers yesterday. Gone. Who knows where… not that I’m checking.
And a ninja shirt….
And one about coffee for good measure (provided you get the size right…boom boom…)
See… not only will a well placed and relevant spam comment get noticed – it’ll earn you a post in these parts.
My blog is drowning in a sea of spam comments – 140 of them in the last day or so, most promoting wonder drugs and most posted on the garage sailing liveblog post.
Apparently some students from Washington State University were less than happy having their accidental emails to yours truly posted online. Something about privacy issues, stalkers and the like. I’d post the email I received from the student, and the lecturer – but they would probably feel violated. I have removed names and student numbers from the original post. I don’t like censorship – I’m a freedom of speech advocate myself. Did you know that Australia has no constitutionally enshrined “freedom of speech” we’ve just stolen the concept from the US. Interesting stuff really – censorship can be a necessary evil, obviously certain sections of society need to be restricted from accessing particular content. A lot of Christians are pro-censorship when it comes to areas like the arts without really thinking through the issue – what if one day censorship swung around and tried to restrict religious discussion (ala the “Catch the Fire Ministries” court case on religious vilification) – we can’t have our proverbial cake and eat it too at that point – you’re either with free speech or you’re against free speech.
One person who probably should be censored is Joe. His blog is a fine example of that which we should be seeking to keep out of the hands of innocents. There are probably a number of things that really should be censored like Channel 7’s Sunrise program which last week ran an obviously fake photo of the Strand in Townsville under flood water believing it to be real. I emailed them several times seeking a retraction on behalf of Townsville’s tourism industry and they ignored me. Channel Nine ran the Sunrise story in their news bulletin last night after we got Tourism Queensland to put out a statement about the photoshopped picture. Funny stuff.
I was going to write about political activism and piracy (the nautical kind) but I’ll leave that until this afternoon or something.
I had an interesting experience today when my gmail inbox was subject to a deluge of emails from students submitting assignment topics for an upcoming assignment on climate change. 16 students were given the wrong email address (mine) to submit their assignment ideas – so I decided to have some fun – here’s a selection of their emails and my responses:
from: RS, 10:27 am (2 hours ago), Jan 30, 2007 10:27 AM
subject: R – GE301 Topic
My topic for Climate Change: Option 1: Global Warming Option 2: Governmental Policies
from: Nathan Campbell
to: R, Jan 30, 2007 10:47 AM
subject: Re: R – GE301 Topic
Wow that sounds very interesting – go for it…
That was pretty standard, a number of the students had the same ideas so I started encouraging initiative.
from: RD, 10:27 am (2 hours ago)
to nmcampbell
Professor Campbell I have decided to research and write my paper on how climate change has affected travel and tourism based on weather and other factors to different parts of the world. Rob Druffel
from: Nathan Campbell
to R, 10:48 am (2 hours ago)
Mmm, interesting – good to see you’re thinking outside the box. I’m not sure what country you guys are in – but apparently the Great Barrier Reef is about to die in Australia because of climate change.
from: cats
to nmcampbell, 10:29 am (2½ hours ago)
I have chosen the topic of Hurricanes/Tornadoes and how they have increased in severity in the past few years due to the climate change/global warming.
-J
from: Nathan Campbell
to cats, 10:51 am (2 hours ago)
Wow, that’s an original idea based on the 16 others I’ve been sent today – be blown away by climate change…
from: MS
to nmcampbell, 10:28 am (2½ hours ago)
Nicole,
My topic is the melting of the ice caps.
MS
from: Nathan Campbell
to M, 10:49 am (2 hours ago)
Sorry, my name is Nathan. That’s pretty boring and 75% of your class mates have the same idea – why not look at the plight of the penguin due to climate change and overfishing… oh wait – Happy Feet already did that.
Evidently M was a little worried about her topic and sought some clarification.
from: MS
to nmcampbell, 10:42 am (2 hours ago)
If I chose my topic because I know basically nothing about it, can I writeabout that?
MS
from: Nathan Campbell
to M, 11:02 am (2 hours ago)
M, M, M
you have MY permission to write about whatever topic you want. Feel free to wax lyrical about the impact of climate change on goldfish for all I care. Unfortunately I won’t be marking your essay because I’m not your lecturer.
I’ve got myself a pen pal out of the mistake with Michele Tran taking great delight in the situation:
from: MT
to nmcampbell, 10:33 am (2½ hours ago)
Topic: Climate Change and the Effects on Human Health and the Risk ofInfectious Diseases
MT
from: Nathan Campbell
to MT, 10:56 am (2 hours ago)
Well well well, MT, Student ID XXXXXXXX,
That’s a novel idea. And if I was Professor Nicole Campbell I’d be very impressed. However, I’m not, as you can see – not not impressed, but not Nicole Campbell.
from: MT
to me, 11:00 am (2 hours ago)
Hi Nathan,I’m in class now and we were just laughing about the situation, apparentlyour instructor wrote down her email address wrong. Sorry for the inconvenience. Have a good day!-M
My curiosity piqued, I decided to find out where these people were coming from.
from: Nathan Campbell
to M, 11:08 am (2 hours ago)
Hi M,
What’s your class? What university/college/school are you all from. This has made my day.
from: MT
to me, 12:39 pm (28 minutes ago)
Hello there Nathan,Well I am certainly glad that we made your day:) I hope we didn’t overflowyour inbox too much with boring topics on Climate Change. Anyways, we allenrolled in a course called GE 301 which is an introductory course gearedfor transfer students to become familiar with the university’s learninggoals. And we attend Washington State University. So out of all the topicsthat was went to you which one of those would you say is the most interesting…and you don’t say mine:)
So there you have it, apparently the Washington State University’s Vancouver campus Electronic Services Coordinator has a similar email address to me.
She emailed me to apologise for the inconvenience.
from: NC
to nmcampbell, 11:20 am (1½ hours ago)
Hi there,Just wanted to send an apology. My students ended up with your email instead of mine for class today and I suspect you suddenly received lots of email regarding climate change. They now have the correct info and hopefully you won’t be spammed again! I’m sorry. It’s been a long day and I got 2 of my email addresses mixed together. My students said you had very polite responses. Thanks for that and again, sorry for the spam. Cheers, -N
Nice spam
Some commenters around the interwebs should take a note out of this spammer’s book…
Thanks Bill Bartman. I appreciate your candor and kindness.
September 18, 2009