For some time, I have wanted to share with you some of the comments in my spam box.

 

Currently there are more than 150,000 items in my spam box.

 

Usually I take the time to empty it out, but I haven’t been attentive lately, so it just grows and grows.

 

Some of the items are hilarious, like this one that arrived today:

 

Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as
though you relied on the video to make your point. You obviously know what youre talking about, why waste your intelligence on just posting videos
to your blog when you could be giving us something informative to read?

 

Now, given the fact that I almost never (maybe never) post videos to my blog and that I typically overwhelm people with more to read than they can handle, this one is priceless.

 

A lot of my spam is simply advertisements. Advertisements for almost any product or service you can imagine: Rolex watches, roof repairs, hot girls, how-to-do-something, urinalysis, drugs from Canada, and almost everything else you can think of.

 

Many come from corporations that want to use my site to tout their online schools or products. Some come from authors who claim to be free-lance but ask to write a guest blog about the wonders of online learning sponsored by a particular corporate entity.

 

Many spam comments begin, “My sister told me to read this site and…” or “My cousin told me to come to this site…”

 

Others start, “Howdy, dude.” Or, “Howdy, man…” and I stop there.

 

And another typical opening, “I know that this may be off-topic, but….” and what follows is not only off-topic but not germane to anything on the blog.

 

Many start by telling me I have an awesome site. They love what I write. They want to read more. They love the graphics (of which there are none). They can’t get enough. They think that if they praise me or the blog, I will post their comment, though it is obvious that they have never read anything I have actually posted.

 

And periodically, at least a few times a week, someone writes to tell me that my blog looks just like his or her blog and they ask whether I am copying their site.

 

Oh, and then there are the dozens of requests from people who ask me if I have had problems with hackers (like them?) or if I would tell them what platform I am using (WordPress, which is obvious).

 

And the spammers who ask me for advice on how to write.

 

My guess is that there is an army of spammers who would like to find a way to get their comments approved. So far, so good.

 

So far, my favorite of all is the spam that complains that I need to write more and rely less on videos and graphics.