On Blamming and Spogging

On blamming

Don’t you just hate the internet? I mean, the worldwide web is amazing, with more information and entertainment out there than any of us could cope with in one lifetime, but when bugs start creeping in with unwanted attachments to emails, or suddenly your cursor freezes with no warning, cyberspace can become a real drag.

One of the worst problems for email users is spam, but I see on Wikipedia that my current problem, people spamming on my blog, is now referred to as ‘blam’. I’m now being blammed on a daily basis, and although it’s rather irritating, it has its amusing moments too.

Since my website is just a one-man show, I’ve never been inundated with comments from visitors to my website, until recently that is. Now every day when I open my email program, I find at least a few new comments on my website, all originating from gmail and characterized by a random combination of letters for the username, such as wppwhxhgxtz@gmail.com. When I queried the platform for my website, weebly.com, about this, they answered that online comment forms are always a source of spam, and that nothing can really be done about it.

So, I’ve decided that if I can’t beat them, I’ll join them, and share a few of these blammers’ comments with a wider audience. What do you make of this lot? 

“There is certainly noticeably a bundle to grasp this. I assume you have got made distinct good factors in functions also.”

“I discovered your weblog website on google and test just a few of your early posts. Proceed to maintain up the very good operate.” 

“I have read several just right stuff here. Definitely value bookmarking for revisiting. I wonder how a lot attempt you place to create such a fantastic informative site.”

“The very core of your writing while appearing agreeable in the beginning, did not really settle very well with me after some time. Somewhere throughout the sentences you were able to make me a believer unfortunately only for a very short while. I nevertheless have a problem with your leaps in assumptions and one would do well to help fill in those breaks. If you can accomplish that, I would certainly end up being amazed.”

“naturally like your website but you have to check the spelling on quite a few of your posts. A number of them are rife with spelling issues and I in finding it very bothersome to tell the reality however I’ll certainly come back again.”

“I was just searching for this info for some time. After six hours of continuous Googleing, finally I got it in your web site. I wonder what's the lack of Google strategy that do not rank this kind of informative web sites in top of the list. Usually the top web sites are full of garbage.”

When I try to reply to some of these comments, I find that without exception my response bounces back with a message ‘no such email address’, so sadly I’ve come to the conclusion that none of the flattering or critical comments are genuine.

On spogging

I love the word ‘blam’; it sounds like the kind of word stuck in a circle above a gun barrel in kids’ comics to represent the sound of gunfire. 

But a look at its current etymology reveals a totally new, complex concept. Of course the ‘bl’ comes from ‘blog’, which itself comes from ‘weblog’, so we’re left with a couple of consonants hanging at the end of independent syllables and not much in the way of meaning.

Then there’s the ‘am’, from ‘spam’, which started life as a rather tasteless, highly processed, form of canned luncheon meat. However, largely due to the iconic Monty Python Spam sketch, in which every item on the menu contained Spam, it now refers to any unsolicited email that drops in your inbox; and those nasty people who dropped it there are the spammers.

Yet with due respect to the unpaid toilers at Wikipedia, I’d like to challenge the logic of this new buzzword. Surely, if ‘spamming’ is the action or verb, and ‘blog’ is the object or noun that receives the action, our compound word for ‘spamming a blog’ should start with the ‘sp’ from ‘spam’, and follow on with the ‘og’ from ‘blog’, giving us an even nicer-sounding new activity—happy spogging, everyone!