Spampliments, Spampliments, Spampliments, Spampliments ...
September 16, 2007
A reader using the name "Cara Fletcher" posted the following comment on the first blog entry I posted about my wife's anal cancer (Anal Cancer: A Real Pain in the Butt):
The anal cancer should be really a pain in the butt and I am sure it's not very pleasant.I now have to deal with my back pain and with the searching of cure for it that will really help me and hope I'll never have to deal with anal cancer.
I won't insert the old post here, but suffice to say, the title of my initial post was intended as a tongue-in-cheek attempt to lighten up during an otherwise very dark and frightening period ... and the darkness and fear was more directly reflected in the body of the post (though perhaps not as clearly as I'd intended). "Cara" may have read the post, may even be dealing with back pain, and I wouldn't wish anal cancer - or back pain - on anyone. However, seeing as "Cara" lists her homepage as www_alleviatebackpain_net, I suspect that her comment is simply a fairly well-disguised attempt to draw traffic to the site.
The timing of this comment is somewhat ironic, given that my second-to-last blog entry - Don't Take Anything Personally: Commenting on Commenting - was about such spampliments - comment spam with context-sensitive content, referencing something in the title or body of a blog post, often using complimentary terms, and thus better masking the real intent of increasing the Google Juice of the URL referenced by the person(s) posting the comments. That earlier post offered me an unexpected opportunity to practice not taking things personally (such as comments posted on my blog, but also including any perceptions or judgments I may have about others taking anything I say personally). And this comment - and, I suppose, all comments - offer me opportunities for further practice.
I'm reminded of two of my favorite "life rules", as articulated by Cherie Carter-Scott in her inspiring book, If Life is a Game, These are the Rules:
Rule Three: There are no mistakes, only lessons.
Growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The failed experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that work.Rule Four: A lesson is repeated until learned.
Lessons will repeated to you in various forms until you have learned them. When you have learned them, you can then go on to the next lesson.
So, as with the earlier spampliments I noted, I'm not going to take the comment by "Cara" personally, even though this one touches on an area with a strong emotional charge. I am, however, going to delete it and report it as spam to TypePad. If "Cara" was truly intending to add value to me or my blog, well, I apologize ... and suggest that she (?) take greater care in creating even more sensitive context-sensitive content to post as comments in the future.
BTW, the title of this post is a thinly veiled allusion to a chorus in the famous Monty Python skit on Spam ("Spam, spam, spam, spam, ...") ... after all, if I'm not going to take these kinds of things personally, I might as well enjoy a good laugh. Surprisingly, I couldn't find a YouTube video with the segment, but there is a version, with Japanese subtitles, on Google Videos.
[Update: Here are two more examples of spamliments I just found (and deleted) from my wine weblog, both originating from IP address 202.143.126.145:
I am impressed to see this blog. There is a lots of imformation for me. I naver been seen this type infomative place . I m very thank full to the owner of this blog. http://www_cheapviagrabuy_com hello friends first of all I want to know how to make this type blog. I want to make a this type blog where people come can disscuss and give us his opinion than we get more knowledge. http://www_weightlossdietpillz_com I also found other references to the term "spampliments" on other blogs - Michael Terry and the net-K.us/blog - so I clearly did not invent the term.