{"id":694,"date":"2005-02-17T05:26:20","date_gmt":"2005-02-16T20:26:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/02\/17\/almost-famous\/"},"modified":"2005-02-21T19:42:21","modified_gmt":"2005-02-21T10:42:21","slug":"almost-famous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/02\/17\/almost-famous\/","title":{"rendered":"Almost Famous"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know, despite my best efforts, I have never managed to reach celebrity status in Japan… and when I see the kind of humiliation my friend the “talento<\/em>” has to go through, every time he is featured on TV (full story for another day), I am quite happy with that.<\/p>\n

However, I can now die a happy man, since a small part of my work has finally been recognized for what it’s worth, and featured in a Fijian Newspaper<\/a>. Yea, you read correctly: I am a star in Fiji.<\/p>\n

Well, kinda.<\/p>\n

You can read the<\/a> whole<\/a> story<\/a> on Nacken<\/a>‘s blog. Basically, Nacken’s got into a polemic over some censorship issue on Fijian TV, which brought him the visit on his blog of a well-meaning advocate of public decency. That dear lady, quite naturally tried to leave an answer to Nacken’s plea for open-mindedness and mature attitude toward adult themes on TV.<\/p>\n

And that’s when things take a comical turn:<\/p>\n

You see, it would appear Fiji has a strong propension toward triggering Spam Karma<\/a>‘s filters, I think this is mostly due to the proliferation of proxy servers in order to reduce bandwidth costs (proxy servers can sometimes mask users’ IPs, which doesn’t bode well with Spam Karma at all, since it is a way too common mark of nasty spambots too). Or maybe that lady did something stupid that looked suspiciously like spam to SK.<\/p>\n

Anyway, you guessed it, the poor lady’s comment was swiftly killed and she was presented by that now infamous line, which, I am sure, must have infuriated more than one innocent would-be commenter throughout the world: <\/p>\n

Sorry but the total effect of your comment\u2019s actions and conduct during the successive phases of its existence, did not justify giving it a second chance in this world of pain and misery\u2026<\/p>\n

In other words: it got trashed.
\n Bad Karma, man, bad karma\u2026<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, that lady \u2013 bless her simple soul \u2013 naturally assumed this was Nacken’s real time answer to her comment, and was shocked at such a blatant censorship from the man who had risen against her own plea for censorship. Apparently, Nacken’s explanation over the phone did little to lift that confusion, because the next day, the paper printed this letter<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Look! They<\/a> quoted<\/em> me!<\/p>\n

All right, quite obviously we are not getting new Spam Karma users from this article, but this is still totally awesome. I might have Nacken mail me a few copies of this article to frame and send to all the relatives that told me I was stupid when I dropped out of school to focus entirely on that “get rich and famous through cockroach breeding and plugin writing” scheme. Now who’s laughing, huh?<\/p>\n

Ironically, I had just released this afternoon a small upgrade for Spam Karma<\/a> with a much-needed toned down deny message (see change logs<\/a> for details). After all, spambots won’t read the message, and I don’t need to be an household object of hatred for the next 10 generations of frustrated bloggers, so a little politeness and explanations cannot hurt.<\/p>\n

In other SK news, a quick Google search indicates that there are about 164.000 pages<\/a> mentioning the string “spam karma” and 85,000 pages<\/a> featuring SK’s standard “Advice to spammers” message. I have only one thing to say: Wow. Thanks.<\/p>\n

I also guess that means I should get off my ass and start working on a kick-ass version 2.0. And I will. One day… <\/p>\n

To be honest, I am quite ashamed by the current level of result of SK 1.x… It needs some serious reworking, and the addition of a few filters I have been pondering for the past few weeks. Unfortunately, gainful employment still has the priority over fun spam-kicking projects, so it will have to wait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My brush with celebrity in the Fijian Media…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-wordpress-tweaking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}