Uh . . . right.  How dumb do the spammers think we are?  Pretty darn, apparently.

I’ll admit to feeling a little rush of happiness when I saw I had a new comment on one of my posts and read these opening lines:

You’re so interesting!  I don’t believe I’ve truly read something like that before.  So nice to discover somebody with unique thoughts on this subject matter.  Really . .

But then I realized how empty the comment was, devoid of any specifics.  And the next lines gave it away:

[T]hanks for starting this up.  This website is something that is required on the web, someone with originality!

So complimentary!  Naturally I was suspicious 🙂

I pasted that last sentence into Google, and guess what?   It shows up all over the place, with additional variant forms that employ simple word substitutions (“needed” for “required”; “internet” for “web”).

The nice thing about WordPress is that most spam goes straight to the spam folder.  I never even have to see it, although I do check now and then to make sure someone legit hasn’t gotten shuffled over there by mistake, which has happened before.  Because I moderate all comments, I see and approve everything before it goes up.  The downside is that people responding to a post don’t have the satisfaction of seeing their remarks go live immediately.

But the upside is that I can catch nonsense like this before it can establish a presence on my blog pages.  Like some kind of insidious fungus.