Piano

This is a Piano. My name is Hillary DePiano. Not really all that similar. (Photo credit: j__st)

I am constantly being bombarded on Twitter by spam for… pianos. It’s weird because usually the only large instruments a spammer is interested in is the one in your pants. (I’m sorry, I had to make that terrible joke. It was just there for the taking. Too easy, I know.)

I don’t play the piano. I certainly don’t talk about pianos with any frequency. As best as I can figure, the main reasons every piano spammer has me on their radar is because of my name. Apparently, if the word Piano is in your name somewhere, you must always be in the market for a piano is how the spammer logic goes. I have a dear friend whose last name is Dickmann and I SHUDDER to think of the assumptions they must make about her.

Anyway, the piano spammers had been limited to Twitter I got this email:

Hi Admin,

Whoa, buddy, we just met. Don’t get too personal on me now. Only my closest friends call me that.

I find your blog hillarydepiano.com interesting and in line with the area I am familiar with. Would you be interested in a guest post that is relevant to your niche?

“In line with the area I’m familiar with” is not a sentence that even makes sense, sir. And I’m flattered that you find my blog so interesting but not so interesting that you picked up on the subtle clue in the url that my name is not admin. With these amazing powers of observation and your clearly superior writing skills, how could I not be interested in a guest post relevant to my “niche” of being Hillary DePiano? A niche that, admittedly, I do have a unique mastery over.

My name is [Some Dude] from Authority Specialists.

Authority Specialists. I like the sound of that. Redundancy is under-appreciated, I think, and not appreciated as much as it could be, in my opinion. Your grandmother must be so pleased you’re using that thesaurus she gave you for Christmas.

I would like to recommend the following topics that would be an interesting addition to your blog:

1. Tips in Choosing the Best Piano
2. Five Factors to Consider When Buying/Choosing/Selecting a Piano
3. Benefits of Buying a Digital Piano

Those WOULD be an interesting addition. I’ll bet I’ll be the only writing blog writing about how to buy a piano! My readers will never see it coming! Sneaky!

“Tips in,” huh? I knew there had to be a sex angle to this spam somewhere…

Let me know which topic sparks your interest.

Thanks!
[Some Dude]

The topic that sparks my interest, Admin, (Are we close enough now for me to call you Admin?) is what combination of crazy pants keywords you threw at Google that made you think my little blog about writing, commedia dell’arte and NaNoWriMo was a good fit for your spammy guest posts about pianos? Because, OK, the word piano is in my name but there are literally NO other music related keywords. Not to mention that there are also other letters in my name besides p-i-a-n-o. How is your spam net so wide that you’re getting results that are literally just part of another word and nothing else and you’re deciding that’s a solid enough lead to go ahead and fire off an email about?

I’ll have you know that I only ever owned a piano once in my life. It was an impulse purchase on the part of my mother because she hoped I’d learn to play and, in the end, we couldn’t find anyone to buy it when we no longer wanted it and had to pay someone to take it away. You’re just going to need to come to terms with the same fact my mother did all those years ago: nothing you do can make me interested in taking up the piano, no matter how fitting it would be because of my last name.

Sheesh. Somebody play this guy off, won’t you? We’ve already established that I don’t know how.