Many of us who are of a certain age have experienced something like this.
You’re horsing around in the house and there are unforeseen consequences. You bump into something and knock it to the floor, where it shatters beyond repair. When youre mother sees it, she gives the classic response.
“This is why we can’t have nice things.”
I’m starting to feel that way about the Internet.
I have been writing and commenting on various of my own websites for 23 years. I write about whatever moves me, and of every site, I have encouraged readers to comment. The whole idea about commenting is to get reaction from readers. I don’t know that anything I have ever written has changed anyone’s opinion. Maybe all that you can hope for is that they’ll think and maybe evolve a little.
This current site has been my outlet since July 2020, and sometime later this winter I will post my 1,000th piece. I have had more than 191,000 visitors, which sounds very nice. However, in some ways this site has been the most disappointing of all to me. You see, 943 different posts have yielded just 43 comments.
Oh, and another 201 that I have had to delete as spam. Even including them, that’s fewer than one comment for every three posts.
Fifteen years ago, I had a site where I was getting at least a dozen comments — good ones, too — on every post.
The problem was, by not screening comments, I started gettin dozens, then hundreds and then thousands of spam comments.
Bye bye to that website.
And bye to any others where I don’t screen the comments.
Facebook is just as bad. I administer a group based on my high school graduating class. I started the group 15 years ago and it has been popular. Lately, though, we’re getting all sorts of spam/scam from people selling t-shirts and hoodies. I delete them and delete them, but it’s tough keeping up.
Here’s the real question.
Why?
Is the net such an obnoxious place that we accept people messing with websites that aren’t theirs and scamming people?
Really?
Helluva world we live in, isn’t it?
Mike, We (your classmates) NOTICE and greatly appreciate your efforts to banish the spammers and scammers from our WTW Class of ’67 Website. Thanks for keeping it a place where we can keep in touch, sheltered from the chaos of most other social media. Cheers!
Thank you very much.