Today this blog got its first spam

Honestly, what sort of idiot tries to sell fake Viagra on an obscure, crummy little blog like this? And on an old post at that?! (Please don’t answer those rhetorical questions, especially if you actually know the answers.)

Today this blog received its very first spam comment: a link to someplace alleged to sell “non-prescription Viagra”. I.e., with “illegal” in big flashing red neon letters. On a blog run by a former drug research nerd. I declined to explore the link and deleted it in moderation, thereby employing for my first time what Scalzi terms “the mallet of loving correction”.

I mean, it wasn’t even interesting spam, just ordinary internet dust.

I tried to alert the Weekend Publisher, but – as you can see – he was unimpressed. Busy nap schedule, you know. “Management science” is a heavy bear to burden.

I was, however, slightly touched on two accounts:

• The perpetrator(s) had managed to get past both a RECAPTCHA filter and a bot trap (most bots will fill out all fields in a form, so there’s one field that says up front that it requires you to leave it blank). So it was either a bot of mildly disturbing intelligence, or possibly a low-paid human slave of capitalism, working through the tedious chores of a day’s work. Neither is particularly appetizing, but it means somebody made some effort to get in. The humdrum message they left was more than a bit anti-climactic, though.
• Somehow I felt the blog had arrived, in that it was being noticed. I’ll grant you, it’s being noticed by unsavory persons whom I have firmly ejected overboard… but at least it’s being noticed.

So now we’ve probably got about 6 readers (only 3 of whom are me, my spouse, and my cat).

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Notes & References

1: Nope. Not today.