Dear Spammers: How About Just a Little Bit of Effort

Blogging, humor, lessons learned, Teaching and Education, technology 1 Minute

Just about every bloggerhas gotten a comment similar to the following:

“Hello sir/madam your website looks awesome please help me out to create like this. My website is….
Thank you for your support”

Usually, I pay no attention to such comments, but this one stood out because of the salutation.

I don’t know if this was sent by a real person or a spambot, but either way, it’s a terrible salutation.

If it was sent by a real person, how lazy could you be? Here you are asking someone for help, and you couldn’t take thirty seconds to find out if the person you are writing to is a guy or gal? I’m pretty transparent on my website, and it wouldn’t take too long to find out a little about me. There’s even a picture of me…

And if it was sent by a spambot, it seems like it should have gone with a more generic salutation, like “Dear website administrator:”. Even “To whom it may concern:” seems better than “Hello sir/madam”.

Now in their defense, spammers may realize that 99.99% of the spam that they send out is ignored anyway, so why put in the extra effort or think about such minor details.

And in all honesty, even if there was a better salutation, like “Dear Jim:”, the odds are quite high I still would have not approved the comment.

But at least a better salutation would have given you a fighting chance, like one in a million.

Published by Jim Borden

A 60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it. Happily married for 40-plus years, three wonderful sons. Accounting teacher, fitness enthusiast, blogger, reader.

Published

51 thoughts on “Dear Spammers: How About Just a Little Bit of Effort”

  1. That’s one of my favorite “Jim Carrey” scenes. And I think you’d have to be Dumb and Dumber to fall for one of those spam messages. I’m pretty stupid, but I’ve never fallen for one. Yet. Fingers Crossed.

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  6. Some of this is pretty amusing to me, but then I’m easily entertained. Another I find funny is when a blogger likes 7-8 posts in the same minute. Now that’s taking the Evelyn Wood speed reading to a whole new level.🤣🤣 Do they actually think we think they read all those posts?

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  8. I am with Pete. As the WP site is fairly good at sorting out the spam, I just find it all a bit entertaining. Then, again, none of mine are asking for help wit their blog….that might say something about my popularity.

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  9. i always find it kind of funny as well, and am proud to say that an actual company reached out to me once to advertise on my blog. unfortunately, or fortunately, depending, it was a well-known ‘adult’ toy company and after their marketing person sent me a couple of emails, i finally asked her if she had ever actually read my blog – kittens, young children, nature, odd quotes, social justice, and stories, etc. – probably not the exact demographic to match an ad for their product. at that point she said were basing it on number of readers, and didn’t care about my content. )

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  11. I’ve got a couple of posts out of spam comments. Some of them are really funny when you look at the context: I especially like the ones that compliment me on my knowledge of the subject which have been left on my About Me page.

    I work on the assumption that genuine requests from real people will be made via my Contact Me page, not left as random comments on older posts. I don’t get that many anyway!

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    1. Yes, I have also written a few posts based on comments I have received. I have gotten a few from my Contacts page which seemed legitimate, but when I reached out to them, I never heard back…

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      1. You can never really be sure, can you? Most of those I’ve received that way have been genuine, but usually wanted to do a guest post selling their company products. They get a short but polite answer.

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  12. My personal favourite was one that said something like ‘Wow! This is the bestest website I’ve ever read, I wish more websites would read like this…’

    In regards to the salutation I’ve learnt how many instant messages are sent by bots that trawl your profiles first name so it looks like a personal message.

    To see whose genuine I’ve added the emoji 💯 before my name. Now when I get ones that say ‘Dear 💯’ I know to ignore.

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  15. This is an example of the type of spam I get everyday via email. I really don’t understand the point of it: “My pricey, May be U are able to small talk;-) immediately I’m searching for nice male. Im lonely blameless chick.”

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