Online Community, Revisited

It’s a little embarrassing to bring this up, but…

When I posted about online community, I neglected to mention the heart and soul of online community. That special something that online community brings, that no other community can bring in quite that special way:

Spam.

So of course that was the post on which the spam filter broke down and let a couple spam posts through. Call it the internet’s little irony.

Spam is the ultimate in sacrifice; that is, it is the ultimate in making others sacrifice. Let others pay the price for your benefit – that’s spam in a nutshell. Place the burden on the community commons.

But I guess I’m a little sad, because spammers seem to understand community better than people understand community; they seem to understand people better than people understand people.

Why do I say that? Well, let’s look at the spam message. I’ve left it on the original post. but I’ve stripped the original spam e-mail address and link.

Thanks for posting, I really enjoyed reading your latest post. I think you should post more often, you evidently have talent for blogging!

This is brilliant. Ignoring the fact that the poster’s name was “Amazing Weight Loss Story”, this is a fantastic spam post. It’s almost indistinguishable from a genuine comment.

I love my genuine comments. They mean something to me; they make me feel alive in the same way that every conversation makes me feel alive. The spam comment is a mockery of the real ones.

But… I can’t look at that spam comment without acknowledging its understanding of people. The person who wrote that knew exactly how people work. They knew what kinds of comments I want to keep around. If only the author had decided to use that insight for good, for building people up. Maybe they’d have built a community.

The problem with flattery and insincerity is that it always shows itself to be false. The reason it’s flattery and insincerity is precisely because it differs in some way from genuine concern, genuine compassion,and genuine sacrifice. It has some other purpose, some other concern, some other goal. And it’s that difference that betrays it, every time.

I’ll always spot the spam posts, because the spam posts are always interested in something other than genuine community. It doesn’t matter how well written they are, they always link back to their true nature. If I can’t trace a spam post back to a bogus site, then it has failed in its role as spam advertising, and so every spam post is always identifiable, because it is what it is.