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Spambots of the day — 19 Comments

  1. When I re-ran my review of Koestler’s novel The Age of Longing, a spammer (human or bot) dropped by and suggesting a punchier title…probably the same one you got, since it recommended looking at Yahoo’s home page for an example.

    I had thought ‘Sleeping with the Enemy’ was already a pretty attention-getting title, but other possibilities came to mind…

    “Learn the one surprising reason why this girl preferred sex with a sinister Russian agent’”

    or

    “‘Paris, the City of Love. Only one man could satisfy her deepest longings.”

  2. David, those are pretty good. I add suggestions:

    “Finagle a lifetime property tax exemption using this one simple trick!”

    “The top eight mistakes you’re making when you try to bribe your state’s liquor licensing authority”

  3. Catchy title is the clue Stephen Green wrote the blog post and the link will go behind the pjmedia.com pay wall, which is fine. They deserve to make money.

    Today, I see the writing on the wall, and the Blogfather has gone long form of Substack. Then again, that might just be he making up for his occasional newspaper column.

  4. Neo- Stay the course. The wide range of subjects are what interest me, you don’t need “punchy.”

  5. Your spambots are pushy & quite vulgar.
    Mine just seem to want to sell me stuff & give me the inside skinny on some new gossip out of the lives of the rich & famous…oh, and occasional investing tip.

    I’m sure God invented the “delete” function for just such intrusions…with liberal applications of “block.”

  6. We do get nice pictures and videos on the Open Thread.
    That should be enough for the day!

  7. Probably like most, I don’t come here for the punchy or provocative headlines.

    Unsolicited advice is the worst, and least valuable, kind.

  8. My own blog is not very active. I use it mostly to store things like favorite quotes. Once a month I go over and delete 10,000 spam bot comments.

  9. Somewhat related: CBS Sunday Morning did a segment on artificial intelligence programs that create text. Apparently one gives it a topic and it pumps out an essay on it. One demo showed it doing a Limerick, that did not start with “there was a young man…”

    The segment also included comments about how it would kill the college essay assignment, maybe cause the rethinking of teaching some courses.

  10. I wrote a limerick that won a prize once, involving a man from Holt County.

    Jahaziel, I’m sorry about Gerard.

  11. Clickbait titles have become so obvious and obnoxious that I just ignore them. Obviously I’m outside the norm and most still click on them or they wouldn’t do it, but I can’t conceive of how people still get suckered in by it.

    I know I’m in the minority so I can safely be ignored, but using a clickbait title is the quickest way to ensure I won’t read your stuff.

  12. You should be honored. Your head has appeared over the parapet and the troll army now recognize you as a threat. You’ve arrived. Good job.

  13. Grunt…usually it has something to do with a bucket…at least around our place.

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