I was skimming the front page of Open Salon for something interesting to read as part of my morning wakeup ritual, and there it was in the new post list: a stack of messages by two "people" whose names included madeup words that sound like drugs (I'm not going to google them to find out).

Open Salon has spam, and not just in the comments: It has spam members putting up blog posts! I'm a little surprised, since I assume OS has decent tech support, but I'm also sympathetic. Spammers are taking over the universe.

I'm the "support" person for the Book View Cafe blog -- meaning that I make sure all members can post and try to solve some of the technical problems they run into. I volunteered to do this because I've done a lot of blogging, not because I'm particularly good at tech stuff, and as a result I was tearing my hair out over the amazing quantities of spam before I finally figured out how to install what seems to be an excellent spam filter: I've only rescued one good comment that got caught by the filter and just a couple of spammers have snuck past it. 

I do, however, remain mystified by most of the spam. It's obvious junk. I don't know why it's of value to anyone to put it out there and annoy the rest of us. I understand the principle of junk mail, but at least the junk mail I get is readable and obviously selling something that some human being might actually be interested in. 

But I'm sure there must be some payoff somewhere, and I'm also sure it's some kind of ripoff. I hope OS finds a quick solution to spam members, and that it's one that doesn't cause hassles for the rest of us.