Inevitability

I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. I was looking back through my archives, and I found an extra comment posted to one of my entries. Back in the carefree days when I first started this weblog, I yammered about my fantasy of entering the World Series of Poker. After Chris Moneymaker turned a $40 online entry fee into a $2.5 million prize this year, I suspect all those online poker sites are doing a booming business.

And as a result, they've clearly got money to burn. Apparently, they've hired someone to search for blogs that mention poker or the WSOP, and to spam them with links to their own site. How lovely. If I weren't writing about this, I'd go ahead and erase it. I can only guess that I'll have another chance to do so, since I fully expect my new friend "Poker" to come a-commenting on this entry as well.

I understand the strategy behind this kind of nonsense--better to reach 1% of a million people than 10% of a thousand--but still. Part of the point behind the blogosphere is that the links are highly motivated--the idea of spamming blogs seems kind of counter-intuitive to me. And the ease with which such comments are deleted, not to mention the fact that they disappear pretty damn quickly anyway, make it look pretty desperate.