Today I was wondering what the definition of spam is. I checked Wikipedia and it gave me the definition of the canned meat. I had to smile. That isn’t the definition that comes to most people’s mind in this day and age. But fortunately Wikipedia has a link to click for electronic spam. The main–short–definition seems to be unsolicited advertising. Spamming is a free avenue of advertising that apparently anyone can use. I was interested to learn that blogging spam is called ‘blam’.
Blam is the kind of spam I was thinking about as I started this post. If you have read some of my past blogs, you will see that I encourage comments. I’ve had some, and value them. WordPress, whose site I use, has an engine that detects spam. (Site is probably not the correct term but at the moment I can’t think what the correct term is, so I’m just using the word ‘site’.) The spam is put into a folder on my dashboard.
Comments on my blog that WordPress doesn’t consider spam are put in another folder. I receive email notice of these comments, so I can moderate them–approve or not. Not receiving many comments, I rarely check my spam folder. The messages are kept in the spam folder until (probably after a certain length of time) they are deleted from the site. At least they disappear from the folder.
However when I receive email notice of a comment, I sometimes also look in the spam folder. That’s when I’m faced with a dilemma. As I said before, I love comments. And some of the comments in the spam folder seem like they could be real comments, even though sometimes when I click on the link it takes me to a website which obviously is advertising. When I mentioned this to my son, he said “it is your site, you can display what you want on it”. So perhaps I have approved some blam at times. However, at least it seems to me, the only bad thing about this would be if my readers click on the comment and find only advertising and it irritates them.
Which brings me to question myself. Am I so starved for feedback that I am approving blam? If so, is that a bad thing? I still haven’t come to a conclusion on this. So, I’m requesting your feedback. What do you consider spam/blam? I’m hoping that I will get responses other than spamming and blamming.
Incidentally, my grandchildren love Spam. They like it plain, on sandwiches or even fried. And if I ask one of my granddaughters about spam /blam and blamming/spamming, I know her response would be “they rhyme”.
So please readers, do any of you like blam? Besides you blammers and spammers? Although I also have a question for the spammers and blammers. Do you, somehow, get notification that I have approved your blam and because of this, you send me more–maybe sometimes even blamming/spamming under a different name?
learning2leftovers 
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