One of the benefits of being [cough] 40, is that I’ve been on the Internet for a long, long time now. I made my first website in 1994. Back before ‘bots trolled these parts. But now they are everywhere, with all sorts of supposedly tricky ways of getting their links out there. The ones I hate the most may be the comment litterers. Not the ones that are blatantly trying to get me to “click here,” but the sneaky ones that feign interest in the blog post. I get a boatload of these on our family travel blog. Here’s just a sample from this week…
On a post about hanging out with aunt and watching a kids’ movie, someone wrote:
“Hey Great post. This is a bit off topic but im making a site on gold pawn shop [link removed]. I was just wondering what theme you are currently using for your website .Thanks :)”
On a post where I talk about visiting the Peterson Rock Gardens near Bend, Oregon, I got three of ’em:
Hi! Is it ok to use these information in my prject? thanks!
Your blog is awesome. Thank you so much for giving plenty of awesome content. I have bookmark your blog siteand will be without doubt coming back. Once again, I appreciate all your work and also providing a lot great tricks to the audience. [tricks?!]
Blasphemy! Hehe Just kidding! I’ve read similar things on other blogs. I’ll take your word for it. Stay solid! – your pal.
Don’t worry, chum, I’m solidly solid.
I wrote that I’d finished another chapter and put a little snippet of it in and got this response:
I am doing research for my university paper, thanks for your excellent points, now I am acting on a sudden impulse.
Excellent points like “I want to eat bun cha at the Thanh Hoa market. I want to sit on the porch breaking open red watermelon seeds with friends.” Yeah, I’m sure s/he’s using that for that sudden, impulsive research.
One of my favorites on a post with ZERO comments:
Took me time to read all the comments, but I really enjoyed the article. It proved to be Very helpful to me and I am sure to all the commenters here It’s always nice when you can not only be informed, but also entertained I’m sure you had fun writing this article.
I read them, I delete them, and more often than I’d like to admit, I see these same posts on other blogs. The same comments that I’ll receive a half-dozen times this week. Usually it makes me smile at the sheer idiocy of the Internet’s evolution.
