I hate spam. I really hate it. I don’t want anything to do with Casinos, cheating lovers, or SEO bullshit. In fact, I’ve developed a very acute loathing for the phrase “SEO”. I’ve started to mentally connect “SEO Specalists” with “Used Car Salesmen”. If you are one, keep it to yourself. Don’t come and talk to me about SEO. It’s just gaming the system and it’s both corrupt and dishonest.

To that end, I went back to look at Askimet and realized that the API token that I thought was for-pay only turns out that it’s free for personal blogs. What a surprise! So I installed the Akismet plugin (I had earlier deleted it because I thought it was pay-only) and applied my API token and so far, although it’s only been a few moments, my blog is blessedly spam free.

The comments are the source of the spam. There was a post in the WordPress Community Pool regarding Twitter that got me thinking about how my readership engages with my blog. People don’t really engage in Twitter much anymore and they don’t engage in WordPress comments either. All the engagement seems to be focused on Facebook. I’m not against any of this, but I find it very fascinating. This leads me to the topic of this post, which is that blog spam in the comments on my WordPress.org system is even more damnable. Nobody uses the comment system but I’m loathe to disable it. So, Akismet, at least so far, is riding to the rescue.

With that, I have a great Monty Python skit to share with you all on YouTube. Enjoy!