80

When for the first time
A new question I answer
This haiku appears:

Little slab of meat
In a wash of clear jelly
Now I heat the pan

Such a message is
Very strange; is anyone
Seeing the same thing?

Have not seen again.
Came and went like the wind does!
Why I am so blessed?

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14
  • You've just been with a haiku.
    – random
    Commented Dec 10, 2009 at 2:28
  • 5
    Little slab of meat / In a wash of clear jelly / Now I heat the pan
    – Shog9
    Commented Dec 10, 2009 at 2:31
  • 34
    wtf is this??????
    – juan
    Commented Dec 10, 2009 at 2:34
  • 3
    So you have a habit of answering questions more than once?
    – random
    Commented Dec 10, 2009 at 2:49
  • @random - quite often i'll edit my answers :)
    – ennuikiller
    Commented Dec 10, 2009 at 2:54
  • 2
    Edits are not the same as posting a new answer to the same question.
    – random
    Commented Dec 10, 2009 at 2:56
  • 2
    This is pretty much awesome.
    – synack
    Commented Dec 10, 2009 at 2:57
  • Maybe an easter egg.
    – John K
    Commented Dec 10, 2009 at 3:31
  • 22
    Screenshot please... for posterity you see. And um... cough hand-drawn circle around the haiku caugh.
    – beggs
    Commented Dec 10, 2009 at 5:47
  • 24
    I love that the whole post is a haiku now, lol
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Dec 12, 2009 at 18:31
  • 2
    I'm glad someone appreciated the effort. (I'm not really happy with the final haiku, but it was the best I could muster with limited time.)
    – mmyers Mod
    Commented Dec 13, 2009 at 5:25
  • Was it just me who hadn't heard of Haiku before the new president of the EU council was announced?
    – Chris S
    Commented Dec 13, 2009 at 23:37
  • I got this too :( ... I'm not a spam Little slab of meat / In a wash of clear jelly / Now I heat the pan
    – gooty
    Commented Jan 9, 2010 at 11:51
  • As I've written at meta.stackexchange.com/questions/144708/foo/…: A spambot could parse the message, find words like "spam", "detected", "filter", or "triggered", and use them to determine whether it has triggered a spam filter and act accordingly. The haiku is itself meant to be a Turing test, so that bots don't know they triggered a spam filter.
    – bwDraco
    Commented Jun 12, 2014 at 18:09

8 Answers 8

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59

The implementors of these sites have come up with a set of heuristics that attempt to detect spamming. I don't know exactly what they are, and if I did, I don't think they would be happy with me for typing them here. However, from my own observation, I've concluded that the site shows a Spam Haiku when the heuristics go off. Human beings scratch their heads, retry, and succeed. Actual robot spam devices are stymied. I imagine that if you thought a bit about what sorts of time and content patterns might be associated with automated spam, you could figure out why you got to read one.

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2
  • 27
    +1 for an explanation, finally: the site shows a Spam Haiku when the heuristics go off
    – Arjan
    Commented Dec 14, 2009 at 6:42
  • 1
    A +1 from me too.
    – alex
    Commented Dec 14, 2009 at 8:37
19

Spam haiku, baffling
Five questions, yet most still stuck
FAQ weeps for update.

Tastes like ham, sorta
But clogs up my aorta
Pig rigor morta

A half-eaten slice.
Ants swarm the cold, greasy plate.
A suicide note.

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4
  • I just sent my great aunt a Christmas thank-you card composed entirely of haikus. I wonder if she'll appreciate it.
    – mmyers Mod
    Commented Jan 12, 2010 at 15:09
  • She definitely will!
    – alex
    Commented Jan 12, 2010 at 17:12
  • 40
    Well, I just heard back from her. She liked it but also sent me a page of instruction on the proper use of imagery in haikus (though she did admit that thank-you haikus are necessarily somewhat image-limited). Pro tip: Don't write poetry for an ex-English teacher unless you're prepared to deal with the consequences.
    – mmyers Mod
    Commented Jan 21, 2010 at 17:15
  • @mmyers glad to know she liked it!
    – alex
    Commented Jan 21, 2010 at 17:28
6

What are the clear parts?
My mind reels, thoughts turn to hooves.
I'd best just eat it.

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3

I vaguely remember something about this clever poetry from a podcast/blog/tweet or somewhere. It's displayed to make the user slow down and think for a bit, when they are doing something ignorant or obnoxious. Like posting the same (spammy) question multiple times in a row, perhaps?

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1
  • 7
    Sounds like this could work .... on some other planet.
    – innaM
    Commented Dec 11, 2009 at 10:22
2

The haiku is trying to tell you something.

(edit: without a repro, there's no help that can be provided. If you give us repro steps we all can follow, I can tell you more.)

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3
  • 1
    That they're routing the site through Hawaii?
    – random
    Commented Dec 10, 2009 at 6:59
  • 36
    I hope the message the haiku is trying to get across isn't very important.
    – innaM
    Commented Dec 10, 2009 at 9:00
  • @Jeff: Well if you're not worried then what the heck are of the rest of us concerned about! :) I welcome our new exception handling strings that are much more engaging than archaic error codes.
    – John K
    Commented Dec 10, 2009 at 20:20
1

Oh tin of pink meat / I ponder what you may be / Snout or ear or feet?

That's the latest :P

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1

No, Stack Overflow is not "hacked"; it's a Spam Haiku.

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1
  • 3
    It can be found in the top 10 spam haikus google.ca/… but I don't think this leads to the conclusion that SO has not been hacked - in fact the opposite because there's no reason (business, technical, otherwise) that SO should show a spam haiku!
    – John K
    Commented Dec 10, 2009 at 3:14
0

I've seen it. Very odd, I went back and resubmitted.

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2
  • Does it only happen when posting an answer on SO? I haven't done that in a couple of days, so I could have missed it.
    – mmyers Mod
    Commented Dec 10, 2009 at 22:09
  • Pretty sure it was for an answer on SO, but it's either that or for an answer on meta...
    – Pollyanna
    Commented Dec 10, 2009 at 22:18

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