So I'm checking out all the blog spam caught by askimet and I see these MASSIVE stories that people right... hundreds of words, and interspersed in their stories are random links for different drugs and gambling and what not. Do people actually think these things work or what?
They do work sometimes... but only until they are caught and dealt with. You seem to be catching them up front. Joe's grandmother who has a blog might not catch it until they get penalized and start researching why.
YES! it does work unfortunately to some extent. not every blogger has akismet activated or comments moderated so the spammers have a business model of using automated bots to send out million spams like that and a small fraction of it do get posted on the blog which is what they are targeting. i used to get those as well but since i added captcha plugin on my blogs, automated bots can't submit any more spam bypassing the captcha. you might wanna look at that
@OP: They are using automated software for submitting spam comments .They are also using automated software for writing / rewriting these comments as well. So don't be surprised by the length of these comments
They have nothing to lose. Even if one blog in a thousand accepts in their comment, they'll be happy. It is like those mass e-mails sent out. The cost is low, and the chances that you'll get the desired result is pretty low. Many blogs don't have Akismet, and some auto approve every comment.
One of my blog used to get more than 1000 of those spams, earlier i didnt had akismet and was thinking of closing the blog but then one of the DP members told me about akismet..m sooo thankful to him