Monday, April 14, 2008

Verify Me

For awhile now I've suffered in silence, biting my tongue for the sake of my fellow bloggers, telling myself that how people blog is their prerogative, it's not my place to judge. But I'm not sure how much more I can take, how much longer I can handle the irritation, frustration, RAGE!! What, you ask, has me so worked up?

WORD VERIFICATION

It has become the bane of my existence, people. Please forgive me if you are one of the overly paranoid, super-precautious people who have word verification on your blogs. I cannot agonize in silence any more.

I HATE WORD VERIFICATION!!!

Why? Let me count the ways...

1. It's just an extra step. An unnecessary addition to comment-making. What, we don't spend enough time blogging, we have to add five seconds to each comment we make? Some bloggers (you know who you are) read 75 blogs daily. That's 6 mins. 15 seconds (no, I did not do the math. This is where living with a math genius comes in handy) of time spent on the computer that otherwise could be spent, oh, I don't know, reading another blog.

2. What is the point of a code if no one can crack it? I get the idea behind it...make the word in a funky font all wavy and stuff so that mass emailers can't send you spam. Okay, but if you make the word so funky and wavy that no one in their right mind can read it, you may as well put a commenting block on the blog altogether. Is that "m" an "m" or an "r" and an "n"? Is that two "v's" or a freaking "w"? It's madness people!! And the thing is, I swear there's no right answer. I think that whatever you put will be wrong. 9 times out of 10 they will make you type in a new word, just for fun. Somewhere the word verification people are sitting in a little room, talking about all us idiot bloggers trying to guess the letters and laughing obnoxiously. Curse the letters! Curse ALL the letters!!

3. And finally, the main point to my rantings. In my humble blogging opinion, it serves no purpose. I visit many a blog that graciously has forewent the word verification and never, ever gets spam comments. And once (I swear on my computer, this actually happened, it is not an urban legend) I saw a spam comment on (gasp) a word verified blog. So, see? There you have it. No need for word verification. Go ahead, turn 'em off. Oh, what's that? You don't care what I say? You're going to keep your heinous word verification? Fine. Just know I'm sending evil thoughts your way the next time I'm typing in the word frxlm. Followed immediately by the word plgss.

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