Despite the numbers of comments caught by this site’s spam filters each day – thousands, according to the daily spam filter count – about 20 make it through. I cull through them, pulling out these internet weeds to make way for the tiny number of comments from my tiny number of readers to make their way through.
The majority of comments are from redundant sites – to buy Louis Vuitton purses, Nike Jordans, watches, and Lord only knows what else. I used to sift through them thinking a legitimate, as-yet-unknown-to-me reader would stumble across my words and take the time to respond to a posting. That by daring to cast my views into the ether, I’d make contact. I’m as patient as Jodie Foster, listening year after year for a signal from a life force from another planet. Her efforts paid off; I’ve yet to be contacted.
Usually I now click “Empty Spam” and move on.
Sometimes, though, I let my curiosity reign, and I peruse the spam comments. Intrigued by the misuse of language and grammar, the mix of Chinese, French German, Russian, Arabic, and Japanese messages, some even a mixture of symbol and dialects I assume don’t actually constitute a real language, actual words written by . . . And here I’m stumped. Who is it who sent out the following message, not just to me, but to some automatically generated list of websites?
I will not speak about your competence, the post merely disgusting.
I have no qualms with my competence being evaluated. But “disgusting”? Really? The internet is full of improbable, impossible, violent, decadent, debauched and depraved images and ideas. Who is the person whose sensitivities are offended, not by those, but by my idiosyncratic perceptions?
And who is the kind person reminding me (and all others who received this message) of the way in which I’m understood and agreed with, the way in which I belong:
You created some decent points there. I looked on the web for the problem and found most individuals will go along with with [sic] your webpage.
The web is full of people who think like me? Who knew? I thought all along the whole frickin’ point of finding an outlet for my ideas was the way in which I spend most of my waking moments surrounded by people who don’t think like I do. I am usually an N of 1; well, perhaps not one, only, but the minority, for sure. Now I can relax, knowing the contents of my thoughts are generic. I am the internet Average Jane. Most people go along with (with) me. I am not an acquired taste; I am the norm. My newfound sense of belonging may thwart some creative energy, but that’s OK. I’ll just troll around online until I find all the rest of my large tribe, my think-alikes, and read what they have to say about what we think.
To date, my favorite spam comment is the following:
Instead of texting my daughter pertaining to laundry, I accidentally texted a pal from work and it autocorrected to whores.
I should never write another sentence. I am trumped. I have come face to type with a kind of literary genius I will never match: some IT person, with or without command of the English language, with or without understanding the impact of this nonsensical but perfect sentence, perhaps a middle-aged programmer, perhaps a forever developmentally post-adolescent in faded black skinny jeans and lace-free Keds, writing at 4 am, the magic Ted-Talk hour of the deepest existential anxiety and personal alienation. Perhaps not even a person – can spam comments be auto-generated by random word-producing programs? Whoever (or whatever) you are, I thank you.
On second thought, I may yet continue to write. I want to steal this idea, alter it ever-so-slightly, changing the verb tense to present participle, and now, sigh, it is complete: autocorrecting to whores. I want to play in the fields of imagination that open on an errant word, person, thought, idea as they are pulled due north, navigated closer and closer to the truth, not any truth, but a surprising truth, a truth perhaps usually unspoken.
I have found the title for my first published collection of creative nonfiction essays, despite that I don’t want in any way to have to explain this to my son. So maybe I’ll have to hold off, publish a few other collections, wait until he’s learned about whores from someone who isn’t me, and I’m freed up to use it.
Autocorrecting to Whores©, now officially mine.
*all comments from spam received at www.thinkinggirlthoughts.com
The scales have fallen from my eyes. I had no idea before reading this post that there were such things as automatic spam comments.
Again, much laughter while reading this, and can I add my own, albeit different, experience with garbled messages? Sending a voice text to my girlfriend a couple of weeks ago, the phone program took a simple statement of “he was trying to get me to create my own musical theatre package” to the ever better “unfollow me cold sister!”
This has become our go-to any time we don’t understand each other.
Keep the laughs coming…I need them!
JJ