by Rick Blechta
No, I’m going to be talking about something small and seemingly insignificant: spam.
As regular readers of Type M know, we had to institute a policy of all comments having to be reviewed before they’re posted on our blog. Why? Because we were getting increasing amounts of spam, people promoting things without regard to the fact that said items or services had nothing to do with why our blog exists.
At the moment, this gatekeeping duty is falling on me, although we’ll all eventually rotate this responsibility between ourselves. (Fortunately, it’s not that onerous a duty.) But having to look at spam comments submitted nearly every day — already two this morning — I’ve been struck by just how useless 99.9% of the offerings are.
What’s troubling is that the internet, something that offers such a potentially wonderful way of communicating on a worldwide basis, has become polluted by so much garbage, messages of real value can barely get through.
As a mental image, I liken spam to all the plastic floating in our oceans. It is useless — although spam is far less harmful and the spam situation much less desperate — but it is another indication how the human species can take pretty well anything that is good, and turn it into a garbage dump.
If you’ve looked at our comments page, you’ve probably noticed the warning (in caps!) about how spam is not welcome here and will not be posted. Has this slowed down the spammers? Nope. Not one iota.
Over the weeks, this has become personal. I, for one, will not give in! I’ve undertaken as a long-term project to go over all of the 3608 posts Type M has in its archives and atomize every single piece of spam.
Why? Because for once I can actually control and eliminate something I view strongly as being a major negative in our blog project. I can really make a difference, even though it’s a very tiny one. And you know what? It is goddam exhilarating!
Stepping off the soapbox…
