Being on the receiving end of a cyber-attack, particularly a non-lethal form, is very thought-provoking. My first thought was, “Who are these people?” My second thought was, “Are these even ‘people’ at all? Is there any human sentience behind this?” My third thought was, “If these are automated net robots attempting to overwhelm my site with anodyne comments and quips, what did the robots’ creators intend to accomplish? Anything? Or merely anonymous vandalism? And why is the spelling so uniformly atrocious?”
For any of you who intend to post legitimate comments from here on out, please accept my apology for forcing you to register before placing your comment. However, I’ve been watching my spam comments grow exponentially (ironically during a period when my genuine readership had been declining). From one questionable comment every other day or so (Is this from a real person? Should I approve this or spam it?), the spam comments climbed to ten a day, then to forty a day, and then to arriving in my approval que every other minute or two. The spam comments were never obscene or offensive… just… dumb. Either offering generic praise with bad spelling, or spewing some complete non sequitur. The names attached to the spam comments began sounding like a roll call for a low-rent strip show, or the attendee register for a convention of hookers: Candi, Bambi, Disney, Florette, Wanda, Lasynda…
Who set up these robots? What did they mean to do? A few of the names came attached to url’s whose intent was obvious — to sell penis enlargement pills or discount sneakers. But most of them had no visible commercial intent at all. Was this just a form of online graffiti? A type of cyber-vandalism, or anarchy? Attempted destruction and disruption without any purpose at all?
It put me in mind of the planet killer from “The Doomsday Machine” episode of Star Trek… a machine of mass destruction, still doing its work in the remote wastes of space, whose original purpose and creators have been long forgotten and have perhaps disappeared, leaving only their legacy behind. Or the germs from outer space that reanimate corpses on earth and set them to eating the flesh of the living in Night of the Living Dead. In their original environment, were those germs benevolent? Did they act in a symbiotic fashion with higher life forms, perhaps aiding in the act of digestion? Or did they have no purpose at all where they came from?
