A Taste for Spam

I know that I am not alone in this, so I will comment on it.

You can ignore the occasional junk mail. You can dismiss the offer of a lottery win, or the handling of millions of dollars, pounds or euros...for a small fee. You can laugh at the silliness of offers that are so ridiculous that you even write an occasional article about them (I confess that I have done this). But this is not funny anymore.

Vocal seems to be infested with spam.

Now, we all know what spam is. It is not just that horrible luncheon meat that people of a certain generation remember either fondly or horribly. It is not just the punchline of one of my favourite Monty Python sketches. It is...

...unsolicited or unwanted digital communications sent in bulk, often via email, but also through text messages, social media, or phone calls.

Thank you, Generated AI (the only time I have used it on my page).

Usually, with an email account, you can send it to a junk folder and dump it all in the trash and forget about it. But this is not so easy to do when you are trying to write for an online page and are constantly navigating offers of cryptocurrency, job offers (work from home!), and the occasional deal to transfer funds for a foreign entity...for a small fee.

It is getting harder and harder to ignore the comments that are not comments.

And I have discovered a new nemesis.

Its name is...Test.

Please forgive me for using such a neutral pronoun, but it is hard to think of this particular Vocalist as a person...and I am sure that there are some of you out there who have encountered this considerable nuisance.

I have found myself staring down a list of comments and likes from Test and thought to myself, Well, someone really likes my work. Someone appreciates the effort I make to come up with something new and interesting on the page.

Oh, Kendall...please...

All I have gotten out of this particular commenter is how to secure my financial future by investing in cryptocurrencies and other pseudoproducts.

I was already a critic of Shitcoin (sorry, Bitcoin) and the like, so I did not need to have this advertising popping up on my page. I responded by flagging the writer as spam...and discovering something else.

Test's comments have disappeared.

If you are going to be a spammer, dear viral vigilantes, at least be honest enough to leave your garbage out in the open where we can critique it. A graffiti tagger does not whitewash their latest creation because they did not receive the response they expected. They let it stay and move onto their next target.

I really do not know what else to say about this. I am looking at the word count, other commentators and Vocalists, and hoping that these hackers pick a bigger and more lucrative target (I heard that there is a guy with a car company who is digging into the files of the American government; maybe he needs to be taken down a peg or four). And maybe we should be honored with this treatment. Should Vocal be pleased that we are worthy enough to be soaked with nonsense online...? Is it a sign that the page has made it...?

Please...

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Thank you for reading!

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You can find more poems, stories, and articles by Kendall Defoe on my Vocal profile. I complain, argue, provoke and create...just like everybody else.

Give it a look...