Throwing out the comments with the spammers

Yup, throwing out the baby with the bath water works. No comment spams this week. Of course, if somebody out there on the Internets had been wanting to comment on something I wrote, they could not do so. But since this is a z-level blog deep enough in the mire of the Internets that almost nobody reads it, but yet mysteriously high enough on the search engines that the comment spammers find it, something had to be done.

It’s interesting in a Bergman movie kind of way that the payback you get from having a post that gets a positive response on the search engines is that you get to spend your days cleaning up unpaid advertising for rape pictures, Cialis, and online poker sites.

But in the long run, as far as I’m concerned, the vermin have won. I don’t have the stomach or time to deal with their shit. So some potentially interesting conversations will never happen, but at the same time if somebody really wants to get in touch with me, my email address is right there on the site. But, of course, obfuscated to keep the regular spam down.

When you sit down and think about it, it’s really a sad commentary on the human spirit, isn’t it? Here we are with the greatest tool ever created for human communication–a tool that will let almost anybody speak their mind for very little money and have the potential to reach large parts of the world with their words or art–and a small majority of complete shitheads are destroying it in their quest to make an easy dollar.

In a way it’s an analogy of the days when nobody had to lock their doors. Remember those days? Savor that memory. They’re long gone.

It used to be you could have an email account and only get email from people who knew you as a person and actually wanted to have a conversation or speak to you as a human being, and then spam came… Now email usage consist of buying better locks (spam filters) and making sure you don’t inadvertently post your address where the shitheads can find it, add it to their database, and grind down the usefulness of the medium.

And then came blogs, where self-centered people could post their irrelevant thoughts and let their silly friends and casual acquaintances from the Internets talk back to them, and maybe, just maybe, everybody could have a good experience. Well, gone. Unless you’re willing to sit in the cesspool and deal with the dregs of the Earth. If you are, I salute your stamina, but I’m too tired.

And, believe me, sooner or later you’re going to get tired, and you’re going to have to lock your door.

Living in a society where you have to lock your door is no fun.