Well hello, ladies and gentlespam! You are most cordially welcome to the School for Spammers. You have been nominated for this illustrious course by the recipients of your grammatically bankrupt communications. Whether your spam of choice be a comment on a blog, Facebook or Twitter; be you a phisher or a troll; whether you are pretending to be a tax collector, designer rip-off merchant or a porn pusher – we are the place for you!
The aim of this course is to allow you, the Spammer, to more effectively defraud your targets, the Spamees, of their time, cash, or technical wherewithal, by improving the form and content of spam in general. We will do this by bashing your heads together until your astronomically poor English skills improve enough to let you back online.
Embed from Getty ImagesReady? Good. There are three course modules. Please complete all three. Failure to complete all three will result in instant death. Any use of Google Translate will also result in instant death. Crash helmets are not permitted.
MODULE 1: THE EVOLUTION OF SPAM
Spam has come a long way since the first Nigerian Prince e-mails of the 1990s. However, despite the huge growth of platforms upon which to spam, standards have been getting worse, not better.
Sadly, much of today’s spam goes to waste. In a study we made up earlier, 98.997% of all spam was picked up by anti-virus products through bad grammar alone. And in a recent survey of 1,203,503,895 internet users, only 2% of interested parties were able to figure out what the spam was trying either to sell, or defraud somebody of (unless it was porn).
“Surely, having ploughed resources and often money into gathering addresses as spam targets, spammers should be putting more effort into getting their content right,” said Dinglebert Halfhorse, School for Spam Headmaster. “When you’re playing the numbers game by spamming hundreds of thousands of people to try and trick a tiny percentage into clicking your link, why would you f*** it up straight away by making your actual comment or email immediately recognisable as spam?”
In these dark economic times of austerity and cutbacks, such waste cannot be permitted. Therefore, any student found issuing spam which fails to adequately direct its own purpose will result in immediate and irrevocable loss of internet connection. It has been proposed at national level that any spam with more than two grammatical mistakes should result in the spammer being tied to a pole in a public place and slapped across the face hourly with a rather large cod. Here at the School for Spammers we do not believe in mindless violence. However, upon completion of this course, if you persist with grammatical crimes or paucity of purpose, we will mindfully tie you to the pole ourselves.
MODULE 2: TYPES OF SPAM
Spam comes in 6 forms. Memorise these immediately, and punch yourself in the face if you forget any.
- FLATTERY
This are only ever successful with lonely people, or on web pages which nobody ever reads; still, there are plenty of those to go around.
- SOLICITING/GIVING FAKE TECHNICAL ADVICE
This worked for 5 minutes in 2007, making it some of the most effective spam ever, but nowadays it’s about as useful as a Kardashian with a PhD. Primarily for targeting net novices.
- FAKE CRITICISM
This is a difficult one to dismiss, as the sort of people who will listen to criticism from strangers about their writing skills, or the shape of their thighs, tend to be the most active online users. However, this is only a high-performance weapon against the chronically needy.
- THE OLD NEED-YOUR-HELP TRICK
This is as old as the sub-equatorial Prince whose nubile daughter needs to rent a room in your house, but modern forms often combine with #1, #2 and, of course, #69.
- INCITEMENTS TO PLAGIARISM
In a content-hungry internet, it’s a sure-fire winner to target sites which post original content, telling them to steal non-original content from elsewhere. No really it is.
- PORN SPAM
The one exception: you can pretty much throw anything you want into porn spam. A recipe for roast chicken will do. Nobody cares when it comes to porn.
MODULE 3: THERE IS NO MODULE 3, SUCKERS! THAT WAS FAKE. THIS IS YOUR FINAL EXAM
Place the following spam blog comments into their correct categories. For extra credit, correct the grammar, and answer them with a smart comment. Please note that some examples may fall into more than one category. Failure to identify all relevant categories will result in being buried alive with the old cod we slapped you with.
(a) Unquestionably believe that which you said. Your favorite justification appeared to be on the internet the simplest thing to be aware of. I say to you, I definitely get irked while people think about worries that they just do not know about. You managed to hit the nail upon the top and defined out the whole thing without having side effect , people can take a signal. Will likely be back to get more. Thanks
(b) Hi this is somewhat of off topic but I wondering if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML. I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding know how so I wanted to get advice from someone with experience. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
(c) Thanks to my father who told me regarding this webpage, this weblog is really remarkable.
(d) Yes! Finally someone writes about porn.
(e) Do you know that you can copy articles from other websites and make them 94% unique in seconds and re-post them on tarasparlingwrites.comhttp://tarasparlingwrites.com as yours. How? Simply search in google for: Spamxxxx’s essential tool
(f) of course like your web site however you need to take a look at the spelling on several your posts. Several of them are rife with spelling problems and I find it very bothersome to tell the reality however I surely come again again.
All spam replies should be addressed to Tara Sparling Writes, an excellent test site, which to date has received over 32,000 spam blog comments and counting. This is despite the fact that every last one of them has been captured by Akismet, the anti-spam bot from WordPress, never even making it as far as moderation. Apparently, a 100% failure rate is no deterrent to spammers, so remember the last word on spamming, students:
ON A MORE SERIOUS NOTE: If you really want to spam better, you can find a definitive how-to-guide here
I’m guessing you get a lot of this. Me, too. The boners that have leeched onto me put their crap on my e-mail contact form instead of my comments, so nobody sees them but me. They always start out with some variation of “Howdy from Lubbock Texas…” My provider, Weebly, comes with InfoSniper, and whenever I click on their (forget what they call it) IP Source (I think), it always comes from a little town outside Shanghai. They’re always selling the knockoff Nikes and Adidas the children are making in the Shanghai sweatshops. Idiots. Brilliant way to their garbage into a blog post, though!
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I know I’m joking about it, Jack, but I really hate the fake bonhomie, the ridiculous efforts at dialect localisation, followed by otherwise terrible English. Drives me mad. I always keep a large cod close by, just in case.
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Terrible English would work if they claim to be from Texas.
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The crafty little buggers! What if it’s all legitimate and I got it wrong?!
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The very first plugin I installed on my self-hosted blog was Akismet. I just love those guys, and happily donated to keep them going.
It’s all about shoes nowadays, isn’t it? These things seem to come and go, but for now I’d love to tie spammers to a pole in a public place and slap them across the face for hours with a 15 size shoe. With a couple of Roxel watches (which is, I suspect, what the face of that watch they’re advertising will read) tied onto the shoe laces.
And now I have to know your recipe for roast chicken. Sounds very naughty!
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You’re getting a lot of shoes and watches – I’m getting mainly false flattery and technical misadvice. You’d think it’d be the other way round, wouldn’t you?! Just shows how unspecific and pointless it all is. As for the roast chicken, well, now… that’d be telling. So I won’t.
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I should like to complain. Having recently written a blog about SPAM and corned beef – uses of, ways of courteous disposal when served as part of a meal – I have now been tied to a pole and hit with a cod nearly fifty three times so far.
Please, make it stop.
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I myself would like to apologise, Jane, but as in any benevolent dictatorship, contrition could be misconstrued as weakness, and therefore cannot be permitted. I am therefore sending you a 7lb tub of Vaseline, to lessen the blows. It should stop soon enough. Cod isn’t very robust. Also, I’ve hired 100 people to ‘Like’ your spam post. You can thank me later.
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I do miss the Nigerian Princes though…
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Just send me your bank details, Donna, and I’ll fill the gap in your life.
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I’d have to take pity on you if you were pinning your hopes on making your fortune from my bank account 🙂
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I clicked on the link at the end and it just took me to a bloody dictionary site! Honestly, you can’t trust anyone these days.
However, all spam to my WordPress blog seems to have stopped, which worries me. Spam was always an indication that my blog was visible to someone; it was the canary down the mine. And now it’s stopped. Even the spammers don’t want to talk to me. What have I done to deserve this?
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Well, now, Chris, that’s a different problem entirely. I don’t know what killed your spamularity, but perhaps you would like to purchase one of these fine 100% Gucci handbags while you’re waiting for the next deluge?
Seriously though – you are getting spammed, you just don’t see it. I only notice about 0.002% of the spam on here because Akismet removes the rest before I can even see it. The stuff which goes into the visible spam folder is such a small percentage I think they’re only looking for periodic confirmation. My guess is that all the spam hitting your site has already been marked as confirmed spam by somebody else.
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I checked WordPress and I’ve put Akismet on the ‘strict’ (vicious dog) setting. I’ve just put it back to the yappy dog setting to see if anything comes through! Call it a social experiment.
How much do you want for the bag?
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Only 10 dollar. Cheap good price. I see you are distinguishing gentleman. You also need 100% genuine Cartiex watch.
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This day keeps getting better. Do you accept Western Union?
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You better watch that anti-eastern propaganda in these times of heightened paranoia.
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Either Akismet is working very well or I’m a loser. Being of optimistic mind, I’m counting on Akismet.
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I think the correct term for those lacking in spam is “winner”. Congratulations!
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My dearest taraspraling as gods chosed elect writing from new york i am like make business proposal for you! I am having 1 billion dollars I need to move to you private account. As repayment you will to keep 10 millions yourself. Simply please to share you full name and all bank details as quickly as possibly including emails address and home address and phone numbers this deal not lasting long.
As gift just click a href=”https://www.google.com/search?q=warning+site+virus+OR+trogen+google&client=ms-android-motorola&prmd=niv&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjf-76hnq7JAhVN4GMKHTMMB44Q_AUICCgC#imgrc=V_G2hokxKP5BuM%3A”>here to know ridiculously simple trick to tone your stomach and stop toe fungus! Save money now!!!
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You have just graduated from the School for Spam, with 100% Genuine Honours. Your diploma is in the mail. May I too be the first to salute your genius.
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Can you tell I’ve gotten a lot of these?
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I don’t want to play. I think you are just seeking to deprive of my daily eyebrow exercises. Besides, I quite like being invited by Mr Ban Ki Mon, President United Nations, to give lecture, or by my friend in Buenos Aires to pick up the Lamborghini awaiting my collection.
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There’s no accounting for taste, Hilary, but I’m glad your appetite is being regularly whetted. It can be slim pickings online much of the time. I’m calling shotgun, by the way.
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Reblogged this on Jan Hawke INKorporated and commented:
Am suffering from post-publishing fatigue (helped a friend get her latest co-written novel off yesterday) so I would comment more ‘mindfully’ but I just can’t stomach writing about spam when it’s nearly time for turkeys, far too much dried fruit, nuts, marzipan and icing sugar, hot spiced wine and more cranberries than can possibly be good for you even if they ARE a superfood! And chestnuts! Mustn’t forget them… And carrots for Rudolf!
Spam at borrowed Thanksgiving (I know so many Yanks now)? Bah Humbug!
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I used to find the tangible sort of spam quite delicious. Now I’m not so sure 😉
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What’s wrong with you Sparling? Not a single mention of Nike Air Jordans in the whole thing. Great to see that you have written this. It will act as a sister to my post on click baiting, currently in production. Now get over to http://www.conorbofin.com to see some great porn action (food porn that is).
Ha, ha! I spammed your spam post!
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Hahahahahaa Conor!! Gotcha! You walked straight into my cunning plan to drop your URL into a comment. Now all of my spam will be redirected to you. I look forward to seeing much happy spam on you weblog. Youa re writing much excellence in your foodings.
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I didn’t even know WP had a span-catcher. I had to go look. Only 50. I guess I’m not spam-worthy. The few that have gotten through are pretty obvious though – the spelling and grammar are terrible. Who are these people/machines? And the biggest question of all: Why?
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Be careful what you wish for. Seriously. Sometimes it only takes one grammatically corrupt comment to distract me from my targeted ranting into a messy, purposeless rant of many equally inane tangents. I’m beginning to think it’s a conspiracy from all the content-free bloggers out there. There’s a why. 😉
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Almost had me going there, Tenderness. You went into moderation like the great spy you are. I see you got a new job. Have you internment powers?
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You have the right to remain funny, but anything you do say will be noted and used as evidence for laughing at you.
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Had I realised punishment was this wonderful, I would’ve tried masochism a long, long time ago.
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This was epic! Thank you!
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I just checked my spam folder and I had one from Table Tennis Bookies Online! Who even plays table tennis anymore?
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Well, the Chinese are rather good at it. Perhaps your spam is more geographically specific than mine, you lucky thing.
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Well, Tara, I have to confess. I’ve been spam. Yes, not spammer, but spam. Last September my subscription with Akismet expired without me knowing it (didn’t even know I was supposed to resubscribed) and all my comments became spams.
It was like that for a while, I don’t even know how long until I figure that out, and then for a week I was completely stranded on the shores of spam, since every single one of my comments ended in the spam folder.
So, please send me my degree. I think I’ve earned it! 😉
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Your scroll is in the post, Sarah, and well deserved it is too. Yours was an unorthodox method of graduation, but you got 60 billion extra credits for managing to get out of the spam folder at all. Most students don’t ever get that far. Congratulations!
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