Take that as a Comment

It should be no surprise to hear that I love getting comments on my blog posts.

I'm terrible at replying at comments, which another reason why I'll never make it as a pro-blogger (the other reason being I have no theme here beyond brittle dignity and a Game of Thrones obsession).

Sadly the majority of blog comments that I get at the moment are spam. I seem to be on the receiving end of a big upswing in faux-complimentary spam, in which the content and style of various posts are praised to high heaven in fairly generic terms, before a subtle mention of their own spammy website is dropped in.

But tonight while doing a semi-regular deletion of spam comments, I came across my first spam insult.

This spammer obviously read The Game and decided "negging" was the ideal way to provoke me into action. My goodness! I've been insulted! Who does this guy think he is? Oh, he facilitates same-day loans? Wow... I was going to get angry but then I remembered I really need $300 in fast cash at 55% interest to get me through to my next pay day...

It's like those spruikers for gyms who stand on street corners and hand you coupons that excitedly describe in thick coloured fonts the discounts you will get if you sign up RIGHT NOW to their high-tech . And for a brief moment you think "Oh cool, maybe that's a good deal", before thinking "Hey, why they hand it specifically to me?"

The point of all this is that I'm considering turning comment spam detection on which sucks because I hate that word recognition bollocks. You'd think a key factor in a word recognition program would be the ability to recognise words. My eyesight is pretty damn good, but it takes me seconds to untangle the swirled-about-and-jammed-together letters and most times I get it wrong.

I realise that throwing hurdles up for commenters generally discourages commenters, so I won't turn it on straightaway. If anybody has other advice or suggestions, I'm happy to hear them - just leave a comment about comments in the comments.