Five Digit Blog Comment Spam and Numbers Stations
Posted on June 29th, 2006
A Metafilter thread titled "Blog comment spam puzzler introduced me to the phenomenon of an especially weird strain of blog comment spam that lacks the usual telltale links to sites of ill repute or other fishiness. Instead, it features five digit numbers. In the absence of any rational explanation why, all you're left with is the mystique.
The Metafilter thread links to another one along similar lines from November 2005, "five-digit spam, which in turn links to yet another line of discussion on Peter Kaminski's site. Theories abound, as do references to Numbers stations. At Boing Boing, one of the comments mentions you can get a 4-disc CD set of number station recordings, and a PDF transcript is also available. The mystery has even seeped into Craigslist, as you can read in The 212-796-0735 mystery. Take a listen to the MP3 file linked from that article and tell me you're not at least slightly creeped out. I was. It helps if you listen late at night. With all the lights off except the glow of your monitor. And during a thunderstorm.
It almost doesn't matter what the true explanations behind all this stuff are-- they'd probably be anticlimactic compared to all the what-ifs and maybes that are inherently more suspenseful because they're the work of imagination riffing off of bits and pieces of reality.