10 Outrageous Headlines That Will Grab Your Attention

Sorry to be misleading, but I don't have a list of items for you. I generally find those articles annoying, but at least I get it. There are two simple reasons why those sites use such shallow tactics: because they work, and because they have to.

Just giving up on anonymous comments

Well, I think it's time for the open comment experiment to end. In the time since it began, I've had an unending stream of spam comments. Most of them are caught by the spam filter and don't get published, but a few slip through. Besides, whether they are published or not, I'm still bothered by their being there because I get comment moderation notifications every day now. I could just turn those off, but then I'd never be notified even when my input is actually needed, and that would defeat the purpose.

Anyway, I'm going to require a log in again for commenting. If you have a Google account or something similar already then this should be no problem for you. I still won't include a word verification, though, since everybody seems to hate those. I've never minded them, but then again, I was fine with the idea of getting a full body scan at the airport, so I'm hardly the right person to ask about that.

Really, even if spammers weren't an issue at all, there is a tremendous risk in offering people the ability to comment anonymously. The reassurance of an anonymous platform leads people to believe (often accurately) that what they say online will have no consequences for them, and frees a darker part of their psyche to express itself without censorship or reason. I could easily write a whole post about this phenomena. In fact, I think I'll do just that, but not right now. I need to go get something to eat.

So, in summary, while I do still want you to feel free to say anything you want about my purposeless ramblings here, I'd like it if I could know who you are while you're doing it. My real identity is clearly visible to you, after all. If it weren't, it might seem like I have something to be ashamed of...

Well, that's all for now. Peace and love to you, sons and daughters of Readerland.

Just a bit of irony

A little while ago, I decided to change the comment settings on this blog. Rather than requiring a log-in, it would allow anyone to leave a comment anonymously if they wanted to. The intention was to make this place a little friendlier. The actual result was my having to deal with a barrage of spam comments, which has made me feel decidedly less friendly.

Anyway, I may leave it as-is a bit longer, but if this continues, I may just have to switch it back to requiring an account or word verification. I realize that could be a bit of a pain for actual readers, but it's a much bigger pain for me to moderate all the spam comments coming in each day.

So, to any new readers who may happen upon this little blog of mine, if I come across as unfriendly to you, that's just because my mood has been so soured by the parasitic scum of the Internet that my overall opinion of the human race has necessarily been impacted. There comes a point when I simply don't care that much what you have to say anymore. Even so, there are a few people out there who still give me hope. I should be thanking them every day for that, and I probably would if it didn't seem like such an odd thing to bring up in conversation. "Good friend, I just wanted to say thank you for helping me believe that human society may not actually rip itself apart with greed and apathy. At least not this week."

To those of you who are reading this now, thank you. If you ever wanted to leave a comment but felt it was inconvenient, I apologize, but let's face it: on my blog, what I have to say is more important anyway.

I guess that's all. Peace and love, all you reader people.

Just looked at my spam folder

There were some 300 unmoderated spam comments sitting in there, on pretty much every post on this blog, most from the same automated spammer account. As far as I can tell, that account has been deleted, but those comments remained.

Now, ordinarily I wouldn't lose sleep over this kind of thing, even though I actually ranted about these viral marketing idiots before. I will briefly reiterate my feelings on them: if you work at a company that relies on spam bots to market itself, you work for pathetic idiots and you are yourself a waste of human life. If I was given a choice between saving your life or the life of a mosquito, I'd choose the mosquito because, unlike you, its existence contributes to the global ecosystem in some small way.

What makes this awful is that, because of the sheer torrent of spam comments, I've never bothered to even look through them before. As a result, somebody made a legitimate comment on a post of mine a while ago, and it went unpublished until now because I never knew it existed. It was buried in piles of filth in my spam folder.

You know, I really don't want to lose faith, but when it becomes possible for a real person to be silenced by overzealous spam filters, because spammers have gotten so out of control that they pose a real threat to productivity, it really makes me feel awful for the state of humanity.

I can't state this enough: humanity prospers through community and cooperation. That is the only way. If you bother or even harm other people for your own gains, you are a blight upon all that makes the human race great. It's taken us so long just to come this far, and still selfish people will tear down all that we hold dear just to make themselves a little bit more comfortable.

Now, I realize it seems silly for me to say all that about something as common and (mostly) benign as spammers, but this is just the final straw. Spammers are only one minor nuisance, but they're part of a systemic breakdown of our most treasured values. I see the tentacles of the human Id grasping at everything and everyone I care about. Half of the time, people don't even realize what they're doing is hurting others. The other half of the time, they simply do not care. It turns my stomach, and I can't bear to shut up about it.

Anyway, I'm sorry this has been kind of a downer. Obviously I'm in a bit of a depressed state lately, what with the mostly fruitless job search, my student loan debt, and all the unrelenting stress and drama of politics. I really should just unplug for a few days; stay off the Internet, away from the TV and radio.

The one bright side is that I have real friends now who always seem to renew my faith in people. In times like these, I can't forget about them, or anyone else I care about.

Alright, that's enough of that. I'll try to find something fun to talk about next time. Peace and love, readers.

To All Blog Comment Spammers

Stop commenting on my blog. I'm getting really tired of having to delete your shit day after day. I opened this blog to anonymous comments because I wanted to be inviting to the random wanderer, but if this shit continues I may have to disable commenting for anonymous users, if not disable comments altogether. I don't want that to happen, but I'm sick of having to keep deleting your digital garbage all the time.

Besides, what are you hoping to accomplish, anyway? Do you know how few people read this? And they definitely aren't going back and reading the old posts, which are always the posts you comment on for some reason. You're not helping your respective e-businesses by doing this, you're just pissing me off.

So, if you happen to be a spammer and are reading this, for God's sake just grow a brain stem and stop spamming here. Idiots.

Breaking the Chain

Some of you may remember a little chain letter on Facebook a while back, claiming to be from "Founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerber". Well, it seems to be back, this time appearing in my message inbox. I don't blame the guy who sent it to me, but clearly we didn't raise enough awareness the first time.

Let me just make it clear: If you get this message, delete it. Don't forward it. If you forward it, you will be taunted and ridiculed with extreme prejudice. The message is fake, and everyone knows it. I myself logically proved it in the past. I refer you to Exhibit A.

So, let me just say that, if you forward this thing to anyone at all, you are either an idiot, a sadist, or both. While I'm normally a very forgiving person, if I get this message again, I'm going to bring back the Serial Killer app and make good use of it. You don't know fear until you've seen what a pissed off nerd can do to your Notifications page.