Comment spam, me? Ha! This must be one of your human jokes!

Do you know what’s interesting about comment spam? Nothing, of course. But consider this. No piece of comment spam has ever been able to mimic a human convincingly. It tries, but comment spam is like the aliens among us. They look like us, dress like us … but they also eat the houseplants. In obedience to the iron genre trope that there must be some obvious failure of mimicry that gives away this sinister presence. To read comment spam is to come to awareness that these creatures have travelled a long way to get to our little blue marble floating in space (whether they come in peace, or to breed with the ladies, or because their home planet is tragically polluted.) Consider this offering, left in response to a post about a passage from Thomas Mann:

I also have read some of the best articles I’ve ever read after coming into the blogoshpere. I check the indices such as Daypop for what are the most linked news stories and blogs. I used to go to the library and look through publications but I would never find the articles and stories I’m finding on the internet.

There is a pathos to it. (I’ve left it up to reward it for winning my heart.) I’m seeing an alien who has assumed a somewhat Walter Mittyish form. He is short with thick glasses. His suit is ill-fitting. Every day he goes to the library seeking information about this strange new world. The nice librarian – a mousy girl with glasses and pearls – very demurely executes a gesture that takes in a whole room of books full of articles and stories. Our protagonist clumsily examines a few volumes, sniffs them, turns them upside down. Where is the information? When he becomes frustrated he makes little honking noises that annoy a bosomy old blue-haired bluenose society-type. A rugged teenage boy in his proud letterman’s jacket is checking out a book on football. He openly laughs at the stranger. “Yer an oddball, fella,” causing the little man to back nervously against the shelves, eyes darting. A book falls on his head. The librarian, feeling sorry for him, whispers ‘shhhh’. Every day it is the same until one day the delivery man, polite cap in hand, presents the librarian with the heavy box containing the library’s new computer. She is nervous but excited, eager to make this new thing part of her little domain. She isn’t sure how it works … but the mysterious stranger is there by her side. Somehow his fingers find all the right keys. We see the light of scrolling pages reflected in the lenses of glasses. Daypop! He is happy. The light is in her glasses, too. She is happy, seeing that he is happy. Every day he is there, always Daypop sending him to new blogs where he leaves messages. Always the same. About how in the library he could never find anything, but now Daypop sends him to new blogs everyday. He can hardly type the messages quickly enough. (He has another amusing tick. He always drinks milk. Only milk. Which gives him a silly moustache. But the milk makes him slightly drunk – his alien metabolism. Hence he slurs his speech and types things like ‘blogoshpere’.) One day the librarian, out of curiosity, clicks on the little hyperlink that is his name – odd name, sounds foreign – at the bottom of one of those many comments he leaves all day, every day. It transports her to … the little stranger’s homeworld, where she is surrounded by golden (oh, hell with it.)