Internet Spam

Spammers are swine - selfish swine. All they care about is that they get what they want, generally money, never mind any inconvenience to thousands, in some cases millions, of us.

I include in my own personal definition of spam:

• Unsolicited email
  
  
• Pop-ups
  
  
• Pop-unders
  
  
• Audio and video ads that start automatically when you go to a site page
  
  
• Full screen advertising pages that appear when you follow a link to a news article or something else that interests you.
  
  For example, when you follow a link to Forbes.com for a news item, you are sometimes (always?) directed to a full screen ad first. And while this portion of this rant is in play, wouldn't you just like to know what moron designed the exit from that page - a button labeled "Skip this welcome screen," as if we were the morons, as if we would look at this blatant commercial and think, "Oh, how nice. A welcome screen."
  
  I would guess that if you could read, categorize, and count the thoughts of the next 10,000 people to encounter that page, the result would be
  
  · "Oh, how nice. A welcome screen." - 0
  · "Skip this wretched commercial." - 10,000
  
  To be a little more fair, I imagine that some small number would fall out of the 10,000 and actually be interested in the ad. But none of them would think of it as a "welcome screen," you betchum, Red Ryder.
  
  It's their site and they can do what they want with it, so I suppose we have to exclude them from the "swine" category, but does it get any more condescending than calling an ad a "welcome screen?"
  
  
• Posts unrelated to the site on which they are made or unrelated to the subject with which they are associated
  
  
• Keyword spamming - including words and phrases unrelated to a post so that the post will be found by a search

In those last two categories, I recently tripped over a PITA. I like to follow the players and results in the upper echelons of poker. One way I do this is to go to YouTube and search for the word "poker" and then click on "Date Added" so that the most recently added videos appear first.

Well, the porn pigs have discovered YouTube. Porn has its place, I suppose, but the only reason for it to show up under "Poker" on YouTube is so that it can scream, "LOOK AT ME! COME TO MY SITE! GIVE ME MONEY!"

Don't look, Ethel. If you are easily offended the following lists are not for you.

At the time of this writing, the most recently posted videos with the keyword "poker" include those with the following titles:

• Page 1, results 1-20
  3. Hot Girls Stripping!
  12. Sexy Tight Boob TV Host
      
  13. Superblonde Playing Around Her Body
      
  14. TV Pretty Blonde Upskirt
      
  15. Sexy Hot Housewife Sunbthing (sic) Cam
      
  16. Mistress In Corset Tortures
      
  17. Brunette Babe In Bikini Sunbathing
      
  18. Nasty Lick Feet
      
  19. Very Hot Bedtime
      
  20. Lesbian Playing Slapped Ass
  
  
• Page 2, results 21-40
  22. Hot Sexy Horny Pose Breakfast
  24. Clothed Teasing Webcam
  32. Tv Live Sexy Upskirt
  33. Hot Pretty Tv Girl Miniskirt Nice Boob
  34. Hottest Girl Blonde Updownskirt
  36. Elleni Menegaki Always Panties Upskirt
      
  37. Brasil Street Babe
      
  38. Pretty Sexy Babe Thong Stripp (sic)
      
  39. Nice Pretty German Mini Skirt

So . . . if you want to catch up on poker, you have to wade through the fever swamps of money-hungry pornographers advertising their sites. They should have their little hoozits cut off or sewn up, as the case may be.

Not a poker fan? Well, just for you, here are some more keywords (but not anything like all keywords) associated with just one of these videos:

• football
  
• Nba
  
• basketball
  
• mlb
  
• hockey
  
• nhl
  
• paris
  
• fifa
  
• golf
  
• world cup

Search for any of those and you get to wade through porn to find what you were looking for.

But I have to tell you, that is not nearly as bad as it gets. There have been occasions when all twenty videos on a page were unrelated to poker.

Alas, there is no way to complain to YouTube about this, at least none that I know of. You can contact them about violations of the site's terms of use, but the terms of use are silent on keyword spamming.

Posting day update: The above was written seven months ago. Things have improved some on YouTube. There's still some spam, including porn, but it's not overwhelming anymore.