Spammers, Trolls and Plain Bad Manners
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
Ah the World Wide Web, you’ve got to love it. Right? Well sometimes. I have several theories about the way human beings approach interaction with other human beings on the Web and they generally revolve around the factor of anonymity. For example, in real life, if you walk into a store and enquire about your service warranty you get a very polite conversation but try that scenario on the telephone… the response is somewhat more hostile. Anonymity (or immunity from getting socked in the face) tends to bring out the worst in humans in many instances.
Spammers… especially repeat offenders at comment spamming like ewebhostingsolutions.co.uk (no I’m not linking) who repeatedly assure me they’ve taken my domains off their spamming list. Ethically shithouse practice for a web development firm. They shamelessly respond to emails with assurances that I’ve been removed from their list. Like WTF?
Trolls and flamers… say no more. Ignore, rinse and repeat.
Plain bad manners. This usually comes around in forums with replies like read the manual. Or, looking back at the curt terminology on a recent comment from another Steven Clark, it began with the assertion edit your post… rather than a more casual hi there, you seemed to have a typo. Imagine if you walked into someone’s house and you said your introductory statement to the owner was curtly put - edit your post… seriously.
