The blogosphere is officially mundane. I’ve included in this post the text of a spam email that arrived in my work inbox today. The colours, fonts etc are exactly as it came to me. The header read “Baby Herbal Soup” and the text begged me to “pray” for the babies in a village in Canton who are being boiled into soup. Urban myth meets spam email.
I couldn’t help but go “Yeah, OK,” and click the link to http://www.handylanka.blogspot.com…It is a real trip.
There are real entries here, including videos and commentary on “stuff”, but it ain’t like no blog I’ve seen so far.
Sheer lunacy, I’ve got no idea what it was trying to sell me?
Like this entry, which reads in part: “to read the full story with lots of photographs”, that could be p*rn, but it doesn’t seem to be.
Baby Herbal Soup…???? !!!! Please Pray to Stop This !!!!!!
A town in Canton, China is now on trend taking baby herbal soup to increase health and sexual performance/stamina. The cost in China currency apprx. $ 4000 (it is about Rs 2000) ………………………………
To read the full story with lots of photographs …………
Visit … Read….Enjoy………
Only for handy men & pretty women
I kid you not, here’s one of the recent entries on this blog. It’s totally wierd. It’s a joke right? There are a couple more like this, note how it seems to end with some kind of “pitch” – that’s the spam part.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Husband and Wife
Husband – hey dear, I am logged in.
Wife – would you like to have some snacks?
Husband – hard disk full.
Wife – have you brought the saree.
Husband – Bad command or file name.
Wife – but I told you about it in morning
Husband – erroneous syntax, abort, retry, cancel.
Wife – hae bhagwan !forget it where’s your salary.
Husband – file in use, read only, try after some time.
Wife – at least give me your credit card,
i can do some shopping.
Husband – sharing violation, access denied.
Wife – i made a mistake in marrying you.
Husband – data type mismatch.
Wife – you are useless.
Husband – by default.
Wife – who was there with you in the car this morning?
Husband – system unstable press ctrl, alt, del to
Reboot.
Wife – what is the relation between you & your
Receptionist?
Husband – the only user with write permission.
Wife – what is my value in your life?
Husband – unknown virus detected.
Wife – do you love me or your computer?
Husband – Too many parameters.
Wife – i will go to my dad’s house.
Husband – program performed illegal operation, it will
Close.
Wife – I will leave you forever.
Husband – close all programs and log out for another User.
Wife – it is worthless talking to you.
Husband – shut down the computer.
Wife – I am going
Husband – Its now safe to turn off your computer
r.PROMOTE
I’m sure this is not the only site like this, but it’s the first I’ve encountered that’s just so mind bogglingly ordinary and Homer-ish. It’s a spam site I’m sure, but how does it work?
Have I just raised it’s credibility ranking and given it a boost?
Tags: wierdblogs, blogsphere, digital sublime
Ethical Martini 
I’ve had blog spam appear in comments on my blog….usually for SONY electronic gear. “Bessie” the name they use. 🙂
As for the NZ blogosphere…..are there more than 150 to 200 active people in it?
I’m thinking of blogs that see more than 3 posts / week.
Tumeke! stats would suggest that would be on the high side of regular blogger numbers.
I’m distinguishing between actual bloggers and that other (larger?) number who are commenters on blogs.
[…] In a recent post I suggested that the blogosphere is now “officially mundane”. [Baby Herbal Soup] I felt at the time the readers might think that comment a bit pretentious and a bit of a put-down. […]
Trend Micro classified it as a hoax.
http://www.trendmicro.com/VINFO/hoaxes/hoaxDetails.asp?HName=Ba+Kut+Teh%3A+The+China+Way+of+Cooking+Hoax&Page=1
[…] original Baby Herbal Soup […]
[…] have repeatedly pointed out that this is a hoax revolving around a confronting and controversial performance art piece by a […]
[EM: I hve edited this to make it clear that ‘Little Man’ now emailing from Punk_goddess@yahoo.com (what’s that about?) is quoting me from a previous response to a previous comment from her/him]
[Little Man] Nice ad Hominem. And I love the way you tried to censored me out like that you fascist prick. Well, The Trend Micro site has no citation so it is null and void, and the wikipedia article about Zhu never connected him with the pictures from the Seoul Times. I have a picture of a baby soup being prepared along with a full article. What do you have besides some half assed links and you’re factoid, head in the sand naivitey? The burden of prook lies on you. Go ahead. Give me a link. just ONE credible link with some citation. If this is fake, it shouldn’t be that hard to debunk now should it. And don’t even think about blocking me, because your child-like “lalalalalala I cant hear you!!!” antics will not keep me out.
[EM, you dropshit knuckle-dragging dribblejaws. I am a tolerant son-of-a-bitch, headkicking, low threshold for stupidity kind of guy, but you obviously don’t take ‘fuck off’ for an answer.
Here you go arsewipe. Now piss off.
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/horrors/a/eating_babies.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2614643.stm
http://www.artnet.com/artist/425618684/zhu-yu.html
http://www.artspeakchina.org/mediawiki/index.php/Zhu_Yu_%E6%9C%B1%E6%98%B1
Note to any other dribblejaws who want to actually ‘debate’ this racist filth. Don’t come here to do it.]
I am being stalked by Little Man whoever she/he is. LM persistently attempts to leave comments on my various baby herbal soup threads. I’m not sure if he/she is connected with the Seoul Times, which I reported on here.
https://ethicalmartini.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/baby-herbal-soup-the-internet-for-sick-fcks/
But LM’s point is that I have not ‘connected’ my argument that the images of a man ‘eating a baby’ that appear on the Seoul Times site are images of the Chinese artist Zhu Yu who appears in another set of images [see my links in previous comment].
This is important because the promoters of the baby herbal soup hoax constantly refer to these images as if they are of a real baby really being eaten.
However, I am certain that the images at the Seoul Times – which has branded them with a watermark – are lifted from a Zhu Yu performance.
Here they are without the Seoul Times watermark and a commentary that says clearly they are lifted from a Zhu Yu performance.
http://www.urbanmyths.com/index.php?/Food/fetus-soup-anyone-the-myth-of-chinese-baby-soup.html
And for anyone who cares to look beyond the gruesome FAKE pictures it is also clear that the Seoul Times text is the same as the text in any number of other ‘stories’ that purport to be about baby herbal soup. That’s how urban myths are generated.
Little Man is one of several dribblejaws blocked from commenting at Ethical Martini and I make no apologies for this. I have said repeatedly here that I am not going to give a platform to these idiots no matter how abusive they get. I also make no apology in replying to them in base language. They don’t deserve any respect in my view.