The Internet is a Cesspool

Okay, not that you don’t already know this, but every once in a while, I can’t help but complain about it just a little bit. So, this blog is a WordPress site. When I first got started, I had to decide how to do an actual blog, and it was a bit of a pain in the neck. And this site has even been fully hacked and taken down at least once that I can remember. With the help of someone more technical than me (thank you BH!), I wrested it back. But nowadays, with a few dollars in extra security surveillance and a couple of extra plug-ins to keep creepers away, it mostly just hums along.

But lately, I didn’t notice that one of my anti-spam comment plug-ins had gotten outdated, and I was suddenly inundated with the stupidest spam-a-licious comments. Here’s a sample:

Okay, so first of all, a ton of comments in Russian — why? It’s so annoying. In theory, spammers are trying to get people to click on other sites, but what a weird-ass, roundabout way to try to do that. Let’s take a not-particularly-popular local blog from some random lady in Upstate NY and put comments in Russian on the off chance that someone will click on the links? I mean, I know that they must do this to a ga-jillion sites, but it just seems so unbelievably inefficient. There are also all sorts of weird, vague, complimentary posts, ie., “Your words are so wise! You’ve made my day!” and it just seems mean, because presumably somebody, somewhere, thinks that there is a stranger out there with whom they are actually connecting. Luckily, most of these are also in terrible English, which is a nice tip-off. Take, for example, one of the many, many purveyors of CBD gummies who have commented lately in baffling, laughable English:

A monstrous option, indeed!

So lately I’ve been having to clean out all of these comments and mark them as spam, which I try to do as quickly as possible. But if you take a second look at the image up there, you’ll see that among the spammers there was an actual retired teacher who stumbled onto my old blog post about the Presidents Song that a former teacher had written many years ago, offering up sheet music. That single post is my greatest source of random comments, and I don’t want to smear the poor lady as a spammer, so luckily I caught it. But if you’ve commented lately and the comment either disappeared or went without a reply, it most likely got caught in all the spammy sludge, and I’m sorry.

I think I’ve fixed the issue with an update to my original plug-in, plus another plug-in for good measure. But meanwhile, writing this took me down memory lane a bit, because I thought I should link to my first blog post, which I remember was talking about trying to get the damn thing set up, but I hadn’t looked in a long time. So long, in fact, that I’d forgotten exactly when I started the blog. So, first: can you believe that in December, Capital District Fun will be 15 years old?!?!? That doesn’t seem possible. I started when M was 7 and J was 5, and now they’re 22 and almost-20. I’d also forgotten I had this concept that it would be fantastic to have a database of activities that were happening, but I had no idea how to do that. And wasn’t it convenient that as I was thinking about that, my future-friend Deb was building it in Rochester, NY, with the plan to spread it across the continent, which of course she has, finding me via our mutual friend, June, and this blog, and then hiring me and making me first a local editor and now the communications director along the way. And of course it’s a good time to thank those of my friends who “peer-pressured” me into actually doing this. While I am neither a viral sensation nor a best-selling author, I’m grateful to have this record of our family’s daily life and a place to complain or crow or cry, depending on the occasion. And that is why I am happy to keep this teensy little corner of the internet as tidy as possible.

UPDATE: