Peggy C, The Other Half

Battling referrer log spam. Oh joy. Because I really don’t have anything better to do with my afternoon than figuring out why our site’s access logs are clogged with hits from bogus sites about horny Russian teenagers with webcams. (Although, to be fair, the party poker and online casino sites are just as bad with this practice.)

As I was muttering curses under my breath researching this phenomenon, it also made me think about the place of porn in our society — how sad it is that sexually explicit material treads almost exclusively in the gutters and bad neighborhoods of our awareness, presenting itself like a marginally criminal enterprise even when it’s perfectly legal. Vice. I realize that for some people, the illicitness is part of the thrill, but when it’s always like that? All the fucking time??? It gets old.

I’d like to be able to tell people what I do, what Tony and I do without it being met with suspicion. I’d like to not be assumed off the bat to be a merchant of sleaze — see Tony’s recent experience on the Ovusoft bulletin boards (Hard times at Ovusoft) for an example that left me seething.

If there’s going to be a revolution, can it start already? Huh?

p.s. for anyone curious about the referrer log spam thing, I found the following article helpful — Proposal on referrer spam with some recommendations for bloggers to help make this practice less appealing to spammers.