We Call It Riding The Gravy Train · 3:09pm Dec 14th, 2024
We love the sound, that's really what we think. Oh by the way, which one's Pink?
Got my first FiMPhishing PM! 
Some bot going by the handle of "Alice artist" created an account on Wednesday, chose 20 semi-random accounts to "follow" on Friday and sent me this at 3:47 EST in the morning:
"Willing to get a talk
Hey, its alice artist , the artist! I just finished reading your story, and I absolutely loved it—it's incredible! I’d be so excited to turn it into a comic and bring it to life.
Right now, I’m offering a 40% holiday discount on all my commissions! I’m currently taking on new projects and would love to work with you. It would be amazing if we could make this a regular collaboration, where I help bring your stories to life each week. Can’t wait to hear your thoughts!"
Boiler plate proposal text, only notable by the near lack of spelling errors and the space between "alice artist" and the following comma. My guess is that it's LLM generated and "alice artist" was edited in for this phishing attempt. The heading, "Willing to get a talk", screams English is not my forte. As for "turn it into a comic", ha ha ha ha, yeah right.
The 20 accounts that "alice artist" has chosen to follow have two things in common: all have published at least one story on FiMFiction and all have logged in to FiMFiction within the last day or so. Nopony in that bunch that I remember seeing, so I don't see any other common thread. "alice artist" has no profile icon, no links offsite and no info.
Spam. 
Edit to add on Tuesday (December 17): Aaaand alice the artist has left the building! The account and the PM went *poof!* but she still "watches" me from the Great Beyond. 
I usually ask them to summarize the story they claim to have "read."
If they actually read it, hey, I get a free read on one of my stories and I waste a bunch of their time.
If they can't do it, I lose nothing, so what do I care?
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I have a strict 'do not reply' policy when it comes to phishing and unsolicited offers. ^_^ I play dead or 'tape recording'. I don't want to get on any spammer's list of viable contacts. But you raise a good point! There hasn't been an increment in the number of views on my one and only story in weeks. Ergo, they haven't read it. All the more reason to play dead.
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I try to get on their list intentionally because I'm willing to report them and the staff is actually pretty good about nuking spammers, so by contacting me they're inadvertently committing account suicide.
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So many people, so few blogs in this writers/readers retreat. 
Good hunting, Winston. ^_^ They haven't "followed" anyponyelse since yesterday. Perhaps they got some nibbles on AO3 or some other hobby author site. Still odd how they managed to spot people who have logged in recently. It looks like at least 90% of those are still dropping in, my "follow" list is more like 60%. Ooh! Kkat was by 4 hours ago.