A few comments about Russian spam and anonymous postings

I'll be brief with this one, readers. As I wish to move on to some very important topics over the course of the next couple of days and the subject matter here is unworthy of big word count.

Russian spam

First up, a few words about spam. Boaty & D (the dot com version) has been up and running for almost a year now, and we've had precious little trouble in terms of spam hitting our comments sections. Until now, that is.

This is quite an interesting development, because the spam is largely from a Russian source, and arrives in mostly Cyrillic script. Co-incidentally, all this started soon after a visitor from Moscow made a few hits on our site. I know he/she is from Moscow, because I keenly check the Boaty & D battleship computer most days and we get all the details on who checks in and out.

It's not often we get readers from Russia, and so call me paranoid and presumptuous, but I've kind of put two and two together.

If, as my suspicions would have it, we are under attack from a Russian based spam artist, I cannot say as I am very surprised or shocked. Our site has featured one or two articles in the past attacking that country's foreign policy, specifically how they handled the South Ossetia crisis.

From what I understand, Russia under Putin and his pals have adopted a peculiar and rather bizarre way of dealing with anyone who criticises that country or anything remotely Russian, even slightly: they attack them in any way they can.

I might be totally wrong here, but based on the trickle of news that comes over regarding Russian issues, I would not be amazed to learn that Moscow employs a little department somewhere dedicated to cyber-attacking and disrupting all internet based sources of anti-Russian sentiment.

Why else would a British based blog, that has nothing to do with Russia, and is written in English, come under sustained and vigorous attack from Russian spam?

The trouble with all this, is that while this may cause upset and a change in direction to most other sites, this will only have the direct opposite effect on me. Because I am a very odd sort of bloke who has a real stubborn, fucked up, nihilistic attitude to things. I do not always act rationally and cautiously, particularly when I feel under attack or treated adversely for no good reason.

In other words, I don't give a motherfuck. I really don't. Words are cheap, but these ones are the real deal. If these cunts seriously think that by slapping my site like a bitch, I'm going to pick up my handbag and makeup and tout my wares on the next street corner, they have another thing coming.

In fact, what I intend to do is actually the exact opposite of what they want (which is probably to take down the comments section, moderate the site, or block Russian IP addresses).

So here's a final warning to the weird deranged cunts attacking the Mighty B&D:

If Boatang & Demetriou continues to be targeted by Russian spammers, we will start writing articles that criticise Moscow. The more spam, the more articles. It's that fucking simple.

Anonymous postings.

Boaty & D welcome posts and comments from anyone who wishes to make a comment, particularly if it concerns the subject matter of the piece to which the comment is appended. We prefer it if people used, if not their own name, then a handle so that their comments can be aptly attributed to an identified author. We are not anal about pseudonyms or anything like that, but one 'anonymous' is no different in identity to the next, even though they are often different individuals behind the post.

We are delighted and encouraged by the recent standard and content of comments on our site. Be they critical or approving. Many good comments have come from 'anonymous' posters, so that has been great.

That said, when we receive abusive comments, it is somewhat infuriating when they come from an 'anonymous', purely because of the sheer gutlessness behind the exercise. If you want to be particularly rude and abusive, that's fine, but it reeks of cowardice when it is not even penned under a handle.

It is doubly infuriating when the abuse is posted on threads which are months old. This is horrendous bad manners and poor blogging form, not to mention sly and pathetic. Guess what, you didn't get the last word in, because the debate is dead and we only see your comments pop up by email notices to our account.

Here's one such example of a post, which was attached to an article we did on Libertarianism in September of this year.

"Nah. The Libertarians are the 'fascists' in the modern useage, who would finally rape the last of the assets out of the UK and go live with their pedo buddies in Thailand or Cambodia on the proceeds.

You cunts are a joke. You rail against socialism/statism, and yet haul the least able to verbally defend themselves for trying to,because they have suffered in the schools of Frankfurt School socialist propaganda, leaving them bereft of the ability to string together cogent arguments.

If you two weren't devoid of compassion, just like Libertarian in Chief (even if she quibbled about the lables she was attached to), Ayn Rand you soulless bastards, you would pity them rather than mock them.

Still you'll die eventually, probably at the hands of the Moslems when they take over once the BNP and anyone else standing up to them have been shut up by a pair of cultural Marxists like yourselves. Or like Thatcher, covered in your own piss and shit, unable to talk or wipe your arse.

Shitbags"

This semi-literate, incomprehensible rubbish scores 1/10 on originality and 0.5/10 on amusement value. Intellectually, it scores a minus, and in terms of addressing any actual view we have stated past and present, the comment is in 6 minus figures.

Apart from getting libertarianism wrong, our politics wrong, the whereabouts of us and our associates (Cambodia?) wrong, and concepts of life and death wrong (don't we all die eventually, you prick?) this chap, like with so many abusive trolls, eventually gives away his true motivations.

Racism.

It is no co-incidence, in my mind, that the rise of the far 'Right' in Britain has brought with it a new surge in ultra nationalist and racist blog comments. Probably because there are more of these people, and also because they realise the value inherent in spreading their hate across the internet.

So not only have we been hit by Russian spam over the last year or so, we have also been hit by numerous (including this) fucked up racist diatribes which fail to address any points we have made and fail to advance discussion.

The spam 'comments' will be deleted, but the comments from the lunatics and morons will not be.

But for the sake of your own pride, nationalists, we ask this: that if you want to make your views known here, you do so in a coherent and identifiable manner. Use a nickname, and try to address points we make and views we hold. It will make your shit sound that little bit more plausible and interesting.