this morning i woke up, as usual, to a number of new comments on this blog. here are two, both from the same commenter:

on my post, 14 ways to quit smoking:

i am a big smoker. i tried to quit lots of times, but never succeeded. the biggest problem is that i am not even smoking soft easily cigarettes, but i am always smoking cigars. i tried to get rid of this addiction – but i simply can’t! every time i am looking for an article about how to quit cigars i only find this type of articles about cigars and… i feel like i want to just smoke one.

and on the post, the consequences of our actions:

it’s exactly like the smoking discussion. i don’t really know if you are a smoker or not. i am, and even if i have breast cancer because of smoking, i still don’t have enough will to quit my cigar addiction. tobacco smoke contains dozens of cancer-causing chemicals. cigarette smoke can turn normal breast cells cancerous by blocking their ability to repair themselves

both comments originated from the same email address. the words “cigars” and “cigar addiction” were linked to the sites cigaradvisor and doctorvar.com/best-cigar-deals.

now i’m known for having a bit of a soft heart for spammers. but this goes way, way, way, way, waaaay too far.

i understand that people want to drive traffic to their site. most bloggers do. i understand that people want to make money with their blogs. on a small scale, i’m trying this myself right now. i understand that people can go a bit overboard once in a while.

comments like these, however, are mind-bogglingly offensive. they’re almost worse than the real ugly sex and rape spam that i sometimes get here. at least those are crystal clear. they’re not beating around the bush (ooops, that pun wasn’t intended). they go straight to akismet and straight into the garbage. if it’s kiddie porn and i have a bit of time, i report it.

this sort of spam, however, is on a completely different level. and i’m actually seeing a connection with kiddie porn here: like a pedophile, it tries to ingratiate itself with the reader. fortunately, they’re somewhat transparent:

“if i have breast cancer …..” what do you mean, “if”? if you had breast cancer, ms. spammer (the email looks like it might be a woman), you wouldn’t say any of this. so you don’t have cancer. you’re just using a bunch of keywords to try to get some google juice, and you’re doing this on the backs of people and their families who are suffering tremendous physical pain and great mental anguish. on top of that, you are doing it to promote something that causes all this pain!

in addition to this disgusting behaviour, one of the links actually goes to a “health” site. yes, good old doctor var promotes cigar smoking. this “doctor for your life” (their tag line; something tells me we’re not talking about someone with a medical degree here) talks about melanoma and diets oh, and cigars. whatever brings traffic. (if you want to find out more, or contact the owner, linda christie, directly, here’s the info)

i often think the word “unethical” is overused. this, however, deserves the label many times over.

(image by darkpatator)