So, what was I referring to, when I talked about spambots and pingbacks? No, it’s not a remake of the song “Handbags and Gladrags for the ’00s, instead I was referring to… um, the following.

Right, your honour, what happened was…

There I was, sat in my comfy chair at work, munching a madras, which I really wasn’t enjoying, thanks to stuffing myself like an idiot for most of the night. I happened to be viewing some RSS feeds, and one on Techcrunch (I think) irked me somewhat, about last.fm “giving” users’ data to the RIAA. Therefore, I deleted my account. This was simply because I hated what the site had become. I was a great fan and supporter of the site when it was ran by “the little man”, but then I found out it was now ran by CBS, and that it served absolutely no purpose for me any more. It was no longer the quirky little site with useful, original features.

I have a screenshot of when it switched from audioscrobbler to last.fm. there was an advert on there for some indie band thing (I presume), with “I LIKED YOU BETTER BEFORE YOU SOLD OUT” written on it. It can’t have been more apt.

Anyway, I voiced my opinion on there, and “pingbacked” to the original article on Techcrunch. Within minutes, the hits went through the roof, and I started to get comments such as this, all from the same IP address, and all within the space of a minute. Initially, I marked them as spam, but eventually allowed them onto the site, after all, they weren’t hurting anybody, and I quickly filtered the IP address. Oddly, it was from a UK IP address. I’d have expected a lot more civilty, and much better contruction of sentences from a fellow Brit. They certainly weren’t as imaginitive as Chad’s eminently cutting and hurtful comments (only joking), but I guess that’s what the anonymity of the interwebs brings…