What kind of idiots respond to spam?

In an idle moment, I took a look today at what this blog’s spam filter had caught. Today, there were 81 spam comments and all of them were so obviously spam, that I can’t help wondering why anybody ever clicks the links on them. And, let’s face it, the only reason spam exists at all is that people click the links and then buy stuff. To get a feel for how ridiculously obvious this comment spam was, here are a few quotes from it.

“This post provides clear idea in favor of the new visitors of blogging, that genuinely how to do running a blog.”
“I am gonna watch out for brussels. I will be grateful if you proceed this in future.”
“With havin so much content and articles do you ever run into any issues of plagorism”
“I care for such info much. I was looking for this certain information for a long time.”
“I liked as much as you’ll obtain performed right here.”
“It’s great that you are getting ideas from this piece of writing as well as from our dialogue made at this place.”

And there’s plenty more where that came from. Mostly it was of the type that aims to make a brief, flattering comment, then leaves a link. But it’s all rather let down by the completely generic nature of the content and the awful English, which frequently disintegrates into complete gibberish.

Now, is there anybody in their right mind who, upon reading such drivel, would think, “Hmm, interesting comment. I must click their link and find out more about this insightful person.”? Especially when the links quite blatantly point to knock-off fashion outlets (Nike and Calvin Klein being the most popular), dodgy financial services sites, gambling sites, Christian sites, pharmaceutical sites, and others that you’d never visit in a million years. There was also one link to Storify (worrying) and, my favourite, to a site offering car audio sex. (Car audio sex? Is that a thing now?)

Now I know that intelligence is normally distributed and for every person with an IQ over 120, there is someone with an IQ under 80, but, come on! Yes, I know they’re allowed to vote (for which Tony Abbott must be sincerely grateful), but surely, surely we can do something about complete and utter morons responding to spam that even my pet Airedale could spot as a con?

Or is it that people genuinely want dodgy financial services, dodgy pharmaceuticals, bitcoin casinos and car audio sex?

Pssst! Wanna ride?