Attack of the Chubby Faced Geek

Posted on September 23, 2005

I promised myself I’d get a grip over the weekend, but instead I have to vent.

In this business you deal with all kinds of people - my online friends are young and old, learning challenged (self-proclaimed), new to internet marketing, pros at it, men and women and people whose primary language isn’t English. And I love them all. Just ask anyone of them who writes me one-on-one to bounce around ideas or ask questions. The way I see it we’re here learning and growing together…

Well most of us…

There is one personality type that is stuck in high school, or living in their momma’s basement at 33. I have never accepted them well - they are the self-righteous finger-wagglers of the world. You know the type - they just don’t gripe and complain about the ‘odd’ thing, they complain about everything. And in the process they accomplish nothing of value on their own. They’ll jump on any bandwagon and attack any person they deem the flavor of the day.

Thankfully there aren’t too many of these.

When I first started working with Joe Vitale he warned me. And he also taught me what to do with those people…delete the messages, unsubscribe them from your lists, or just flat out ignore them. It’s been just over a year now since I’ve been in the ‘low-voltage’ lime-light of internet marketing (I used to work away silently on other people’s sites), and I’ve been near tears over the stupidity and cruelty of strangers about 4 times in the past year. And I’m not an easy crier!

I used to wonder why there weren’t many other women in in the business and now I know why. You’ve got to have a really tough hide to do this job.

And you have to learn how to handle the nay-sayers…

I’ve heard people attack Joe Vitale (who is a truly wonderful, giving and decent man) because his sales letters talk about trancing people out of their money. “That’s shameless! Using his hypnotic power to rob people of their savings!”
I’ve heard people complain about Jason Cain (another honest, passionate and caring human) because he unsanctifyied blogging by teaching a chosen few how to make money with blogs. “Oh you can’t do that! Blogging is all about personal space. Making money doing it just makes it dirty!”
I’ve been called a snake-oil salesman myself for co-authoring a book about generating traffic and gaining subscribers with the help of RSS Feeds. “RSS is pristine! It’s all about news! Don’t commercialize it!”

…and the list goes on.

And I am not above the ranting factor either. Goodness knows I went off about BlogPower when it was released (there’s a long story behind that one which doesn’t really belong here). I guess it’s human nature.

Yet when someone comes to my site and leaves a sentence of crap without anything to back it up I can’t help be find myself fed up - again.

Here’s where the Attack of the Chubby Faced Geek* title comes in…

Yesterday I wrote a post about Michelle Timothy’s RSS2BLOG and the report that Kelvin Hui wrote about his use of the software. Now the way those two use the software is different than the way I’ve been using the software, but no where in the use of the software is there any form of spamming or potential to spam. Not to blogs, or email, or websites, or forums.

But this self-righteous finger-waggler hits the comment button on my post and outright calls me a spammer and says I’m going to jail.

(I guess that does sound rather ridiculous doesn’t it? Hard to believe I’m so worked up about it now.)

Now, don’t go look. I’ve deleted the comment, but I wrote the out-of-context-comment-poster a personal email asking how he thought I’d spammed him, if he was subscribed to any of my lists and explained how to get off them - told him that I’d deleted his comment but he was welcome to come back and leave a valid note about what had caused him to say such a thing.

And, of course, his email address bounced after I hit send. So I went to his website, got lost in a sea of links, bad design, unrelated ramblings and poorly organized posts - and left my questions there.

Of course he couldn’t reply to me one-on-one in email. This type of man usually cowers when the women they’re trying to intimidate call them out. He simply returned to my blog and left another wimpy statement - “Do you know what Blog spam is?”

What the heck is that? Do I know what blog spam is? I most certainly do! It’s the worst part of website ownership. The dirty little house-cleaning chore that we all must do if we want a blog or forum and want people interacting with us.

Let’s grow up here. So many people are on the rant about blog spam these days. It’s the latest thing to bitch about. Very fashionable you know.

But get it straight - Anything worth having is work to maintain. There’s no free ride. You can’t open your personal space up to people and not expect some nasties to get in.

You have to be smarter than them, or stronger, or more diligent.

Good grief.

Be smart:

Turn off your comments.
Or turn on word verification.
Or make people register before they can comment.
Or go back to building html pages.

Be diligent:

Run a wordpress blog that holds all questionable content in moderation queue and update your spam words regularly.
Check your blogs every morning and sweep up the garbage.

But most of all, get over it.

Anyone who runs a business online knows that it’s not all roses and sunshine. Sometimes a dog craps in your yard. Or a chubby faced geek. Sometimes your server crashes. Sometimes you spend 1/2 the day in customer support.

If you don’t want to be ‘out there’ for all the world to see and comment on then put your prized blog behind password protection. Become an elitist, not a finger-waggler.

After all, finger wagglers only ever end up in the old folks’ home, all alone.

There is no perfect world, no…

———————-

More coming I imagine. Right now I have to hang out with my daughter just in case I do get dragged off to jail and miss her growing up.

*By the way - Ed Dale is not the Chubby Faced Geek, Ed is the Tubby Nerd. No connection. Do you know Ed Dale? He’s the down-under 1/2 of the underachievers. Very good content on their blog for niche marketing (hit the July and August post for good podcasting content.)

Bookmark / Tag It! Stumble It!