I wrote this post.

The scraper site generated this post.

Here is a selection:

"Josh E Armstrong wrote an interesting post today on [Blank] Here’s a quick excerpt…"

Who is Josh E Armstrong?

Does not this scraper know?

Has he not been made aware?

That my one, true name is…

Stratovarius Megatrend!

I just got wind of this. I had to post. I thought it was hilarious.

Another scraper site linked to Misinterpreted.org and cited my most recent post. It hadn't previously scraped this site, so I thought I'd check it out just to make sure the comment it tried to leave is bogus.

Looks like I triggered its content detection system with an entry mentioning a supposed way to "Quit Smoking."

What I really found funny was the date of the scraper post:

Of course, there's probably a good reason the scraper did that, but I still think it's amusing.

Not only did someone post about what I wrote decades before I ever wrote it, they did so on New Year's Eve!

Whoo!! Let's party like it's 1969!!!

I'm no black hat expert, but I have heard the term, "scraper site," which I believe is used to describe a site that is automated to scour the web for suitable content, which it then copies onto itself.

Over the past couple of weeks, Misinterpreted.org has apparently become mildly attractive to a few different scraper sites. I've received 13 comments so far from random sites that upon visiting display either a snippet of a certain post I made, or the entire post itself.

I remember learning a scraper site's goal is to capitalize on the content generated by owners of websites that aren't very well-known. I think what happens is the scrapers end up ranking in the search engines in the areas that really should be occupied by the owners of the scraped sites.

The fact that I've only gotten 13 comments so far doesn't really bother me, since I'd only worry if I was getting such comments left and right. And since each one contains a link back to a bogus site, I don't approve them.

The plus side is that each of my posts that has been copied onto another site features a link back here, so that's good. Although I wonder if Google and other search engines will penalize me for having a few "bad neighborhood" links?

Cheater cheater pumpkin eater… Don't scrape me, bro!