Spambots

I don't have the Captcha letter recognition thingummy enabled on comments to this blog. I figure I get so few comments anyway, why would I want to do anything to put people off. Hits on Sir Benfro trundle along at around fifteen to twenty a day, most from boozy types looking for a recipe for plum brandy, or how to make the perfect rusty nail. Which reminds me I must pontificate about alcohol again sometime soon.


But I digress. Comments are open on this blog. All can add their wit and wisdom to the rubbish I generate. Even things that aren't actually human. 


I get a few random spam comments - links to online poker, sexual organ enhancement, cheap pills that may or may not contain the chemicals they promise, that sort of thing. All comments drop into my email inbox, so if I see something I don't like, I can quickly delete it. Eventually the people who do these things will realise that random links from never-visited blog pages don't actually help their Google ranking at all. Then they might stop. Or probably not. But I don't mind; it doesn't happen often and I can easily keep on top of it.


Recently however I've noticed an increase in the more random automated comments. Things like this:



Hello.
I am interested in the topic of this forum.
Give will component to such forums.
At ditty forum administrator has deleted me.
He said that I - a robot.
Funny?



and this:


I wish not acquiesce in on it. I regard as warm-hearted post. Especially the designation attracted me to review the whole story.


and this:


Any idea how credit crunch affected porn?


and this:


Hello. And Bye.


and this, my personal favourite:


...please where can I buy a unicorn?


Many of these inadvertent witticisms have turned up on the same blog post:  this one. But there are one or two others that attract multiple hits too. I can only assume they are the random output of semi-sentient spambots, roaming the web in search of meaning for their existence. Or maybe these are the first stuttering words of an emergent internet intelligence, and it has chosen my humble blog as the best place to grow.


I imagine that any machine intelligence that formed from the random whitterings to be found in these pages would be a rum beast indeed. Certainly eccentric, and possibly quite mad. But not as frightening, I think, as one that emerged from pupation in the moist cocoon that is the nameless horror.


Comments

John R said…
Don't go knocking my cocoon. And tell me where I can buy my damn unicorn!
Do you KNOW where to buy a unicorn? Or are you selling them from your stash?

How do you know how many people visit your blog?
Do you have a counter somewhere?

Some blogs have little things which state where the visitor is from, which is kind of interesting...

I'm not a robot.
highlandwriter said…
i suppose james is hiding all the unicorns in some undisclosed location in wales -- hoarding them from the rest of the unicorn-mad world!!!

:-) :-)

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