Today marks a new milestone on my blog: I have received my first bit of "targetted" spam in my blog comments. Up to this point, all the spam received in the comments sections on my blog have been what you might call "widecast" – just throwing out advertising for cheap internet shoes or jewelry or other products, willy-nilly, showing zero awareness of my blog's content, potential audience, etc.
But today I received a spam comment from someone (something) named Jenny, in not-bad Konglish, advertising some kind of cultural event (or coupon club – I can't quite figure it out). I'm not going to do her (he? it?) the favor or reproducing the comment's web address, but I felt some reluctance simply to delete it from the record without observing its passing.
It feels like a milestone, because, instead of being utterly random spam, it's spam-with-a-target – it obviously was placed by someone (or some program) that had a minimal awareness of my blog's "location" and audience. We can call it contextualized spam, as oxymoronic as that sounds.
Here is the text of the spam comment, with the original business name cleverly disguised and with the website address expurgated (because I don't want to reward the spammer).
Come and visit SejongBlahblah on Sunday of the last week of the month. You can find many different artist and singers' performances that are free to anyone! Also, SejongBlahblah is currently having 1+1 ticket event for foreigners. You can purchase one package from ten different packages and get one free ticket with your purchase! If you are interested and want to find out more about this event, you can come out website: https://??? SejongBlahblah is a combination of about 30 culture & art organizations including performance halls, museums and art museums located in the walking distance centering around Sejong-no, where Gwanghwamun Square is located.
This is almost relevant. More so than regular spam, anyway. It got me to reflecting on the possibility that the boundary between spam and not-spam might be somewhat fluid… somewhat fuzzy. Which, of course, makes me think of spam sitting too long in a refrigerator: fuzzy spam. That reminds me of the Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) gift I received from my boss at LBridge a few years ago. A gift set of spam. Chuseok is fast approaching.