You may be familiar with the phrase, "On the
internet, nobody knows you're a dog"- meaning, for the more innocent (or
less politically correct) among you, that what you read may not have been
written by a human being. I'm human, although it usually takes several
cups of tea to get me that way in the mornings. I'm starting to wonder,
though, about the authors of some of the emails I've been receiving.
If you're a real person, and you've written a
comment on this blog that hasn't been published yet, please forgive me - I have
498 (yes, honestly) items that have plopped into my 'spam' folder, that I'm
conscientiously checking, in case they're from genuine readers. I
also fear that I may have accidentally deleted some comments that weren't spam
at all. Incidentally, I wonder why we call it 'spam'. Is it an
acronym?..... Silly People Answer Machines? Spaniels Produce Acceptable
Mail? Senseless Perverted Automated Messages? Oh dear, I'll
probably get more now, having used the P-word. Maybe I should
include a password in each post, for people who feel moved to comment - you
know, like online shopping codes that get you a discount. (Damn, that's
probably triggered a few automated responses as well!)
Sometimes it's very difficult to work out if
messages are authentic but, on balance, I'd rather include comments from
metaphorical dogs than leave out ones from actual people. Life is too
short to worry about looking gullible.
