Spambots
Hello, everyone.
So I am typing this on the morning of September 5th, the day after a spam review incident occurred throughout the entirety of the day before, which basically caused the inspiration behind this fic to not only make fun of it, but to basically raise awareness in case this happens again. If you are one of the victims of those spammers, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, I know how you feel since it happened to me with one of my fics yesterday. But thankfully, Fan Fiction is planning on purging those accounts so we can all live happily ever after. ;-)
~KF
"Alright, time to check my Immediagram account..."
The legendary Ice Climber, Nana, just got home after a long day of smash fights, autograph signing, and a couple interviews for the local news channels. Times after days like those, she found it to be a habit of checking her social media on her free time. Her elder brother, Popo, thought she spent too much time on the internet, and not enough in the real world. Yet in her defense, she felt that if she was unaware of whatever was going on social media, she would feel out of touch with the real world.
In spite of Popo arguing that quite a few fellow Smashers agreed with his point of view, Nana did not care a single bit of what he thought. She figured since it was her laptop she was using, it was basically no one's business. With that being said, she typed her four digit pass code in and she was instantly on Immediagram, since the tween actually closed it while the page was still shown on her screen.
She immediately began to read. From checking the comments on her own posts to witnessing the photos of her friends that she followed, she was already giggling and grinning within a dozen seconds. Everyone that knew Nana would not be surprised, since it was typical of her. She could end up being online for quite a few hours. As nice as she could be, no one was perfect and everyone had their flaws. From Popo's perspective, this was simply one of Nana's flaws, like Lucario being addicted to chocolate and meat.
Speaking of the Pokemon, he was the one who calmly knocked on her door. With him hearing a great big, heavy sigh from his fellow fighter, stomps became louder as she made her way to the door. Unlocking it, they met face to face, yet Lucario of course had to glance down.
"What is it?" She asked, the glare in her eyes not being that difficult to notice.
"...Nana," Lucario started, now with folded arms and a gradual shake of his head. "I am aware of the fact that you being on the internet is one of your hobbies, but instead of doing every now and then as your brothers claims, he's now concerned that you are taking this a bit too far..."
"...Really?" She cocked her head to the side with a sigh. "And so he sends you of all people to talk to me about it?"
"He..." He glanced at the side for a moment. "He figured I was the right person to converse with you, given my personality and rather calm nature as he says."
"He's not wrong..." Nana rolled her eyes. "He's just worried about me being in the spotlight a lot again, now that we're back in Smash and all..."
"Yet, what he did inform me was that it was basically part of the problem." Lucario explained. "Your brother assumes that you are getting carried away, and I could not blame him one bit about it. When a number of people including me are aware of this, you know it is something that is up for discussion..."
"Well, tell Popo that I'm just fine being myself and having a good time in here." Nana turned around to face her laptop screen once more. "Now, if you will excuse me, I need to take a quick selfie so that all my fans could... see... What in the name of Tabuu is this?"
As she was eyeing the comments under her latest photo, she couldn't help but raise a few mental questions as she observed some of the latest comments.
"Nice photo!
Best wishes, ~KatyRule"
"Nice photo!
Best wishes, ~JazmineLeigh"
"Nice photo!
Best wishes, ~AndrewKahn"
"Nice photo!
Best wishes, ~SuzanMcKlee"
As she wandered back to her electronic device to see better, she began reading pondering why many of the most recent comments were similar. Lucario's curiosity got the better of him as he stepped into her room to observe what she was viewing.
"N3ce pfotoe!
B4st w8sh8s, ~LaurynApes"
"N3ce paoto!
B4st w8sh8s, ~ZDSwizzle"
"N3ce fhodo!
B4st w8sh8s, ~KatherynMcGreenlen"
"Hmm..." Lucario widened his eyes slightly at the sight. "...Is it a hacker?"
"I'm... not sure..." Nana shook her head in complete confusion. "All I did was click on the picture with me and my brother being interviewed by 'Smashville Gossip' and now all I'm seeing are comments... from what I'm guessing, the same person."
"...So spam, basically?"
"Exactly." Nana nodded, before sighing. "How could this happen? What have I done wrong? What's this person's problem? What's the whole point of this?"
Clicking on another photo, which happened to be a promotional picture for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, it was deja vu. The same type of comments were visible.
"...What is going on!?"
"Does anybody else have this problem?" Lucario inquired.
Nana searched up her brother's profile page and clicked on his latest post. It read: 'So excited that me and my sister are finally coming back! #Ultimate #FifthEra #SS5'. It only took one scroll for her to gasp at what she saw.
"Good work. 17Y18H186H19U"
"Good work. 1J98YH8F90U01"
"Good work. 1HOU8UGO1"
"Okay, this is getting ridiculous!" Nana glared with her hands now in the air. "I'm taking this to Pecker! This is absolute nonsense! If they're going to make multiple accounts to comment, they should at least not make it as obvious as possible so that people will have a harder time finding out!"
"Why can't you simply post about the issue on Immediagram?"
"Because I want other social media websites to know as well!"
With that being said, she typed in a couple letters in the search box before clicking on the link. To the Pecker page she went, she almost instantly typed a short, simple message in regards to what was happening on Immediagram. Sending it, she began typing in the website's search bar.
"What are you doing?" Lucario cocked his head clockwise.
"I'm gonna do a simple... 'observation' and see something." She answered before completely turning around to face him. "Okay, of all of us in the mansion, who's the least likely person to post something on here?"
"...R.O.B. I suppose..." The aura Pokemon blinked.
"Okay." She nodded, promptly turning around in her desk chair before searching up his account. "Maybe whoever's doing this is not as active on inactive accounts..."
"How come you did not just check under your latest post on Pecker to see if-"
"Okay, seriously!?" Nana was shocked at what she saw. Right under R.O.B.'s post from the previous post were more spam comments flooding the comment section. Only this time, they appeared to be much worse.
"mPGJjgGMLkGmvlN"
"glGAgnlmcOAOHWIOQN"
"o3J09JCPMPCJMmcajnohgo"
"ou9j01u3905u2305031205"
"...Never mind, then..." Lucario took back his previous question.
"Okay, that's it!" Nana got up and placed her hands on her hips. "I've had it! There's a whole spammer brigade going on around here, and if the people don't do something about this soon, I'm gonna sue Immediagram and Pecker!"
"I'm... pretty sure you can not simply sue the two social media networks..." Lucario shook his head. "For all we know, they could be working on-"
"Hey Nana," King Dedede suddenly wandered in. "have you checked SmashBook?"
"Who goes on SmashBook?" Nana's hands were in the air again. "It's not the late 2000s anymore!"
"I know, but I clicked on my phone app by accident and look what I posted two years back." Dedede put a hand on his shoulder and shoved his cell phone in front of the girl's face. Lucario's eyes gazed upon it as well.
"EH.G.H.H..H...H. .S.G...H"
"SG.1T..G...F..23T.2Y...6.26..26."
"..23T2.G.1... .SG.Y...S.T...T"
".!^#t*)i(*&%&*%$&%*&&%& )(HI"
"..."
"..."
"..."
No words initially escaped the mouth of the three Smashers. They instead had mixture of confusion, astonishment, and irritation.
"I can't believe this!" Nana then complained. "This can't be happening right now!"
"What are we gonna do?" Dedede wondered.
"I'm planning on suing all social media networks until they get this right! I can't just deal with it and accept it as the new norm! We need to-"
Her arm was suddenly patted repeatedly by the back of Dedede's hand to regain her attention. "Look at this. I think they know what's going on."
With both Nana and Lucario glancing over at Dedede's mobile device once more, they noticed a post from the head of SmashBook himself.
"There is currently a wave of automated robo reviewers spamming our services. We are investigating and will purge these accounts shortly. If you were previously logged in, you will need to re-login on next visit. This is our first step to limit the robo logins."
And that is a situation that was similar to what occurred on the site yesterday. There was an incident in which many stories have been reviewed by possible bots/robos that were spamming a site. One of my most recent fanfictions were one of them because it was released yesterday, and it seemed apparent that any new fanfiction released at any point yesterday was the target. Fortunately, those "reviews" will be taken down soon, as well as the accounts. So for those of you were affected and you were wondering what was going on, now you know. ;-)
Now, this whole fanfic wasn't just to spread awareness about this. I just happened to pop up an idea in like five minutes, and all of a sudden, this fic ended up being finished within a couple hours so I hope you enjoyed it, lol.
With that out of the way, for those of you that don't already know, my new multi-chaptered Super Smash Brothers fanfic is now out! It's entitled "Survivor - Kodai Island" and Lucario and Dedede happened to be two of the twenty main characters in the fic. Check it out if you like!
I encourage all Smash fans to review, as well as those who despises spam reviews no matter what level of ridiculousness they are.
Oh, and one more thing:
Immediagram = Instagram
Pecker = Twitter
SmashBook = Facebook
What do you think?