born4thesurf

In the absence of any new spam-meat in the last few days on Metafilter (a good thing, I assure you) and the presence of an abundance of free time in my schedule (a rarity, I assure you), I've decided to do a few retro-posts. This latest one is from January 2008 and features the delights of the deceptively named born4thesurf. I say deceptively named because he was clearly born to spam Metafilter, rather than catch the latest wave from out beyond the break (or something). Let's review his three gnarly moves.

" Vinyl records are in the news at the moment. Just this morning I spotted on the London Stock Exchange website that old vinyl records are rapidly emerging as a high yielding alternative investment."
(from the (NSC) - RIP Ron Murphy, master vinyl cutter. FPP)

"Great Image. Yeah lightning will strike the tallest thing in the area, and this certainly qualifies. Very nice though."
(from the God messes with the Jesus FPP)

"Illegal movie downloads and music downloads is a big subject that hasn't gone way for as long as I can remember. Taxing customers via their ISP connection fee and then pass that money onto the various media sources is hugely complicated! In terms of movie download companies like Apple and Vizumi are doing their best to entice users to download legally but not sure how effective this will be in the long run. Apple certainly did well for music with itunes. Can they repeat the same success with imovies?"
(from the Illegal downloaders 'face UK ban' FPP)

This time it seems as though born4thesurf bit off a wave bigger than he could chew with jessamyn performing the kill. Whoa dude! Wiiiiiiiiipeout!!!!

[Learn more about this spammer at the Deleted Thread Blog]

PinkTurtle

PinkTurtle contributed three comments to Metafilter and before revealing her rasion d'etre for being on Metafilter was to spam us with a link to some photos of... well, a turtle. Or was it a tortoise? I'm not really sure. Perhaps it would be best if I just told you what her comments were before she felt the wrath of The Banhammer.

" Most of today's pop music sound alien to me."
(from the Nothing's gonna change my world? FPP)

"I finally will be able to find pants that fit me. If you can afford them."
(from the Fat Ass FPP)

" I love how the "street light" is done by wiping soot off the wall."
(from the Skelewags FPP)

Describing her spameriffic link as being "incredibly transparent", cortex made the kill, leaving Metafilter's janitorial staff to wipe PinkTurtle's entrails from the wall.

[Learn more about this spammer at the Deleted Thread Blog]

inghamb87

Some of you might not know I'm an Australian and I live in the Australian state of Queensland. In this great state is a town call Ingham. I only mention that because inghamb87, the spammer who is the subject of our latest post here at 'Musings' has a name that is spelled virtually identically to this particular town. Beyond that I've got nothing else to say, except for sharing the three comments inghamb87 graced us with before losing his posting privileges.

"What's amazing is that Milton's work still resonates so well today. I saw the play version of paradise lost a few years ago and the reaction was incredible."
(from the Of Man's First Disobedience FPP)

"That's evil!"
(from the Never Gonna Make You Cry FPP)

"The moral of that story is...shit happens."
(from the Bono's Joshua Tree RIP FPP)

And the moral of this particular post is that spammers get banned, in this instance by mathowie, even if you're named after pleasant regional Queensland towns. Shit happens indeed.

[Learn more about this spammer at the Deleted Thread blog]

de novo dahl

In a case of multiple personalities that would make even the most experienced therapist sweat, de novo dahl is not just one Metafilter spammer... s/he's four men and one woman. More than this; de novo dahl is a band. Three throwaway comments after joining, they posted a link to their bands website. Let's take a look at some of their lyrics comments.

"Thanks!"
(from the 2008 Animated Short Film Oscar Noms FPP)

"Mario and Sonic in the same game makes me feel dirty. It's like if Vince McMahon and Eric Bischoff were on the same show. Oh wait."
(from the New Meaning to "Gettin Smashed All Weekend" FPP)

"I love me some jezzball, but this is pretty buggy. Thanks for the link though. One more thing to do instead of actually working."
(from the Jumpin' Jezzballs FPP)

Interestingly, de novo dahl did not feel the mighty wrath of The Banhammer and has since gone on to contribute two songs to Metafilter Music and 3 answers to AskMe. So not banned... but probably should have been. Merciful indeed is our Lord cortex, who killed the spammy post but spared the spammer.

[More info on this spammer can be found at the Deleted Thread blog]

skalitenko

What is a skalitenko, you might very well ask? Not sure, I would answer. Except to say he's a spammer who posted just three comments about food and food preperation to Metafilter before doing the dirty deed. Here's what he said.

"In my opinion the important thing to remember is to cook beef properly."
(from the Where's The Beef? FPP)

"If you want to get rid of a problem -- look for the cause. Same can be applied for bad food. In my understanding there are 3 major types/causes of bad food:

1. Chemicals in our food, e.g. MSG -- monosodium glutamate.
2. Change in food form, e.g. flower: because of milling absorbtion surface goes up dramatically, resulting in abnormally high blood sugar, therefore too high insulin level, then too low blood sugar, causing food craving. Same applies to cookies!
3. Food we are not created to eat, e.g. milk or juices.

Bottom line: do not eat processed food!
Sergey Kalitenko. MD"
(from the Finish your plate please. FPP)

"Everything is good in moderation."
(from the Beery eyed FPP)

Two things to remember skalitenko. Spamming Metafilter is never good, even in moderation. And never provide a moderator with advice on how to ban your ass. mathowie looked for the cause of the problem... you... and banned you. Bottom line; do not spam Metafilter!

[More info on this spammer can be found at the Deleted Thread Blog]

ghostdog

When ghostdog was signing up for an account on Metafilter, he was probably not aware of just how apt his screen name woould end up becoming. Not only did he post a spamtastic FPP after 7 comments, his contributions were so bad they evoked (long-repressed) memories of that terrible 1990 movie Ghost Dad starring Bill Cosby. Somewhat surprisingly for a spammer, not all his comments were throwaways. Let us review his contributions to Metafilter, and you'll see what I mean.

"Amazing subjects and photography. A must share site for my friends in the photography industry."
(from the Now it's dark. FPP)

"Blaming OPEC is like blaming a baby for soiling his diaper. All commodity prices are based on the "futures" market. Here is an oversimplification of how these markets work (someone correct me if I mispeak) A farmer needs to know how many acres of soybeans he should plant this year. A futures trader purchases a contract for a specific date in the future to purchase X number of bushels of soybeans at a specific price. By doing so the trader controls the right to those soybeans.Lets say the weather or some blight affects the yield of the farmers soybean harvest. The farmer is stuck. He has to deliver his soybeans at the time and price he had agreed upon. This may result in a tremendous lost to the farmer but the trader that purchased that "futures contact" is now in the drivers seat. If he purchased enough contracts he sets the price for soybeans. This being the case he will maximize his profit by creating a shortage greater than the actual harvest shortfall.The same rules apply to oil.

Make sense. Thoughts?

The futures traders are making a killing right now."
(from the Oil Tops Inflation-Adjusted Record Set in 1980 FPP)

"Billy Bragg and Wilco. Great versions of Woody Gutherie...Ingrid Bergman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfIPdRNV7cg"
(from the Grievous Angel FPP)

"Dumb question but hey I'm just a dog. How do you hotlink?"
(also from the Grievous Angel FPP)

"I have found heaven on the internet. Someone else who likes Jonathan Richman!! I still have his LPs with the Modern Lovers and "Back in Your Life" still reminds me of the girl I almost married in MA.Almost wet myself when he showed up in "Something about Mary"."
(also from the Grievous Angel FPP)

"Somehow you never forget those Sears catelogues from when you were a kid."
(from the A tribute to the Corsetiere FPP)

"An Ivy Leaguer is an Ivy Leaguer regardless of his skin color."
(from the Tim Wise on Obama and Race FPP)

Upon discovering his self-linking ways, mathowie and ghostdog engaged in a conversation. "But I've got to make it to Thursday!" ghostdog pleased. "It's for my children. My wife died a few years ago and I'm all they have left. Please, Sir Math Owie!" Well, to cut a long and terribly scripted story short, mathowie didn't take to kindly to the way ghostdog pronounced his name, thus ending any chance ghostdog had of finding a scientist to send him back to the world of the living so that he could self-link again and make sure that his children are taken care of.

[More Info at the Deleted Thread Blog]

entrepreneur35

It was clear to many of us that entrepreneur35 was an entrepreneur. It said it, right there in his own username. What entrepreneur35 probably didn't know was that spamming the Metafilter frontpage to his computing website was against site policy. Or maybe he did know but didn't care. Either way, three comments into his career at Metafilter, this entrepreneur's prospects were cut short. Let's watch him ride the ladder of opportunity to the bottom.

"very interesting"
(from the If it really works, it's the coolest audio production tool ever. FPP)

"This is really cool. Microsoft is releasing the worldwide telescope as well, I hear."
(from the asleep at light speed FPP)

"Awesome list, very helpful."
(from the Meet your new weblog overlords FPP)

The dynamic duo of mathowie and cortex worked together once again to take this spammer down, and Gotham Ci... I mean, Metafilter, was safe from evildoers once more.

richdan

There are any number of ways that richdan could have gotten rich. A win in the lottery. Careful investments. Saving really hard and being a spend-thrift. This was not how richdan got rich. He probably made his fortune self-linking to his website promoting his band that plays at weddings (a wedding band, yuk yuk) which had apparently put together "7 mindblowing illusions". The veracity of this claim is highly disputable, but what is clear is that he contributed only three not very mindblowing comments to Metafilter before spamming it, which I have displayed below for your reading pleasure.

"Very nice posting. If only more people could do this"
(from the Paz sin fronteras FPP)

"Incredible. I have bene observig this technology for some time and think it will be very significant in our future lives"
(from the Digital telepathy? FPP)

"Amazing. When can I go?"
(from the asleep at light speed FPP)

According to cortex, wielder of The Mighty Banhammer, richdan was able to go (away) on March 16th 2008. Very nice. If only more spammers could do this.

Eavesy

Eavesy didn't really try to hide her self-link. A mere 4 comments after joining the site, she "just found this pretty cool post about..." well it dosen't really matter does it? Anyone who just found a pretty cool post about something and posts it to Metafilter on their first post is usually guilty, right? Eavesy certainly was, and got The Banhammer for her trouble. Best of all, it appears that not only was it a self-link, it was a failed self-link (meaning she borked the URL on her first attempt). Here's what she had to say before the heavens descended upon her.

"@miss lynnster it can swing the other way, if a guy is really ugly it can help him to cover up his face."
(from the "Each day, every man must decide either to shave or not to shave. The act can be one of conformity, rebellion, laziness, or transition." FPP)

""Is something troubling you my son" - Classic"
(from the Shall we say one million... AH-HA! FPP)

"O'h the poor bunnies, what could anyone have against them?"
(from the I'm mellltiiiiing! FPP)

"it should be working now, read before you judge, I am new here so I maybe should not have submitted it, will try and write a better description next time."
(from her own spammy FPP which I'm not linking too)

The Banhammer was wielded by both jessamyn and mathowie in this instance and Eavesy was dispatched of easily.

DNL

Perhaps DNL felt the need to spam the Metafilter front page after being rejected as a cast member from Saturday Night Live. Perhaps DNL are just his initials. The history of events leading up to his crime is unclear. What is clear, however, is that his self-link occured after 5 posts to Metafilter (and one to Ask Metafilter). Here are all six in their full, ahem, 'glory'.

"Bob Barker?Really?I hope that guy won a car. Or at least played Pinko."
(from the Tattoo Safari : Idolatry or Irony? FPP)

"For some reason, all I can think is "Homer Simpson" and "d'oh"."
(from the Beer! Now! Fire! FPP)

"I ordered my own business cards, and got the address wrong. Instead of saying Y Nth Street, I did N Yth Street. :("
(from the Did you mean charwoman? FPP)

"hal9k -- :(Cost me $18, too."
(also from the Did you mean charwoman? FPP)

"Al Gore just hasn't been to Africa for long enough, I guess.(sorry, all the good jokes were taken.)"
(from the Afrigator. FPP)

"Probably not what you're looking for, but a few years ago, Readers' Digest ran a quip about a guy who wrote an essay about ERA, universal sufferage, and the women's rights movement. Unfortunately, the "R" key is next to the "T", and it came out titled "Movers and Shakers in Women's Tights"."
(from the Most famous typo question on AskMetafilter).

DNL went to more effort than most spammers. He hung around for almost a year and 'contributed' more to the site than most spammers normally do. But in the end he rather blatantly self-linked, an action someone who had planned on contributing to the site in any meaningful fashion should probably have been aware of. His account disabled by mathowie himself, he may return one day, but legends of his ghost haunting the site continue to this day...

bmilly

It was bmilly's intent to write a spammy post about Facebook and the making of much money, and he did after the usual three throwaway comments. He graced our presence with the following musings of great intellectual importance.

"Ummm... very strange?"
(from the Be my baby FPP)

"Hahaha... George Clooney rules"
(from the He looks great for a 70-year-old. FPP)

"Disgusting I hope she wins."
(from the Something "special" in the air? FPP)

The dynamic duo of mathowie and cortex defeated bmilly's nefarious scheme. Millions of dollars and Facebook friends were not made this day, except for the extra $5 in mathowies bank account.

monkee

If ever a deletion reason encapsulated what this blog is about, cortex and mathowie did it when deleting a self-link by monkee. On deleting monkee's FPP, the dynamic duo wrote "Hey! A bald-faced self-link, a week and exactly three throwaway comments after you joined the site! Get bent!" What were those three throwaway comments, exactly? They were;

"Id like my hair back"
(from the Regrowing Limbs FPP)

"Cool deal"
(from the Match it for Pratchett FPP)

"It begins"
(from the Contemporary Hooverville FPP)

Hey, hey it was monkee! And two mods said he was monkeying around. But he was too busy spamming/ To put a significant FPP down...

pkerri1975

In a spammy FPP that was apparently 33 years in the making, pkerr1975 made three comments to Metafilter before claiming that 'Determinism' made him (or is it a her?) do it. Before being walloped with the Mighty Banhammer, pkerri1975 shared the following pearls of wisdom with us.

"I love the lunch at zero gravity. "Astronauts will be able to eat almost anything".......yeah as long as it is paste. I think they would prefer the toasted bacon."
(from the Give me convenient bacon or give me death FPP)

"very very niffty! but can't help but think that some people have an awful lot of time on their hands."
(from the I got rhythm, I got music... FPP)

"i didn't get to read about any of the details as I couldn't stop playing with the graphic at the top of the page."
(from the Photoshop Express - beta version FPP)

Although it was jessamyn who made the kill, this spammers tombstone epitaph reportedly reads "pkerri1975 (1975 - 2008). He or she determined his or her own ghastly fate."

ineedmotivation

It seems that ineedmotivation didn't need much motivation to self-link to the Metafilter front page. Only two comments in, he made a crap-tastic FPP about stress that led to his one way ticket to Bansville. What were his two comments that motivated him to get off the couch and share his thoughts with the world? They were;

"interesting abstract images"
(from the She blinded me with science! FPP)

"it's really weird that we can see something now that happened so long ago....so perhaps whatever we emit here on Earth as far as signals will only be capted by another civilization on some planet in billions of years....!"
(from the Gamma Ray Bursts - they're neat FPP)

Ultimately cortex didn't need much motivation to wield the banhammer on this particular spammer.

Democrat69.

Democrat69 may or may not be running for President right now. Probably not. Look, who knows? What we can say, however, is that if they were running for presidency of the 'Honorary Roll of Great Metafilter Contributors' club (it's a secret club... you wouldn't know anything about it), their primary race would be very much over now. Their campaign mistake? Most reporters agree that spamming the Metafilter front page (after just 4 comments) with a terrible FPP about a fitness site he or she just "happened to stumble upon" was the death knell. Here were Democrat69's pearls of utterly sane wisdom, straight from the transcripts of the latest 'impromptu' town hall meeting.

"This is just absolutely crazy"
(from the That's just insane! FPP)

"Pretty crazy, I like celebs better, D'angelo went from buff to fat. my fav."
(from the 50 helpful kitchen tips. FPP)

"LOL, Whoever made those pictures was 100% high!"
(from the What's up bud! FPP)

"That is a very cool site, old school bookmarked.... IMO if someone doesn't have any interest in any part of history they have a serious problem.... mall shooter? Cool Site"
(from the Yesterday, and Before FPP)

Crazy man! Whoa, he's so high! Oops. Looks like he overdosed and cortex was the poor sod who found the body. au revoir, Democrat69!

Winsoar.

First post on this new blog and the first cab off the rank and straight into Bansville is Winsoar. Before posting his spamtastic FPP, he wrote a grand total of 3 cat-themed comments and they were;

"I have to admit I had no idea what a theremin was."
(from the Theremin cats FPP)

"Can you create custom cat cartoons?"
(from the The Hole in the Wall on Top Shelf! FPP)

"I'm always amazed to see dogs and cats getting along so well."
(from the Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria! FPP)

mathowie made the kill. The only question now is whether or not winsoar got to go to cat heaven? I guess we'll never know.

Welcome To Musings of a Metafilter Spammer!

Hi, and welcome to my new blog dedicated to tracking the thoughtless musings of those who spam Metafilter from before they spam it.

Anybody who visits Metafilter regularly knows the drill. Someone signs up for the singular purpose of spamming the Metafilter frontpage, makes their mandatory three or four comments before being able to do so and is then beaten with the banhammer by our ever diligent moderators. Naturally the comments made by these spammers aren't the most significant contributions ever to be posted to Metafilter... until now! 'Musings of a Metafilter Spammer' compiles the thoughts of each spammer in one single place, so you can read such thoughtful musings as "Nice!", "Wonder where I can get one?" and "Wow" before their posting rights (and their account) were forever deleted. And in doing so you'll get to laugh at the sheer simplicity of some of these asinine comments, and maybe stumble across some of the otherwise decent threads they used to make them in.

Things I Will Be Doing.

• This blog started in May 2008. As such there are a tonne of spammers I haven't yet included. My plan is to do so, but given I also hold down a busy job and have a fiancee and two kids that need my attention (my Wii and PS3), so my time is tight. As such, I'll be doing these slowly and intermittently.
• By the same token, new spammers will be added to this blog when they spam, when I see them and when I have the time to write up a post.
• Eventually I wouldn't mind having co-authors on this site. Eventually. I am but one man and as I said earlier, I have little time, so fellow contributors to the site would be great. E-mail me if you're interested and when my ADD starts to kick in (and I remember my e-mail password), I'll let you know!
• I will be counting comments not just from Metafilter, but from other parts of the site (AskMe, Music, etc).
• I will be asking readers to e-mail me heads-up on future spammers and spammers of old who deserve a mention here but may not have gotten one yet. If you do, I'll link to your Metafilter user page in the post with a thanks.
• I'll be tracking their comments with tags. This will give us an idea of the average amount of comments a spammer makes before spamming.
• I'll also be tracking what kind of content they are spamming us with through tags. So let's say their spammy post is about animals, they'll be tagged with 'animals'. If it's about their crappy band, it'll be tagged with 'myband'. Get the picture?

Things I Won't Be Doing.

• Sometimes, somehow, someone spams Metafilter after 10 comments or more. I won't be including these on this blog. 10 comments (cumulative from ALL parts of the site) will be the upper limit. After that, spammer or not, I'll just be considering them as some poor fool who didn't know that Projects existed.
• I won't be including spammers whose account wasn't deleted by the mods after their FPP was deleted. In such cases I'll be assuming that our esteemed moderators felt that there was a reason for leniency on their part, which in itself implies that perhaps the spamming wasn't entirely malicious.
• If a spammer makes a comment in their own spammy thread, I won't be counting it as part of their comment total. So for example, let's say the spammer makes three comments, spams Metafilter and in that thread makes two or three more comments, the post will still be tagged as 3comments.
• I won't be linking to the spammy FPP directly from this site, for two reasons. One; I don't think that they need another link to the site they tried to illegally promote on Metafilter to exist somewhere on the web. Secondly, puke & cry runs an excellent blog called Deleted Thread which catalogs all deleted threads already, including those made by spammers. What I will be doing though is linking to the spammers disabled user page and the Deleted Thread entry for the post, so it's not like these threads will be impossible to find if you really wanted to find them.
  
• Too many site announcements.

Now go and read, and enjoy!