When you’re blogging, you really like to hear from your readers. You enjoy comments and feedback telling you where you struck a chord and where you hit a clunker. But you know, all those claims about how interactive the Internet is… maybe it’s true some places, but it doesn’t happen that much here.

I post an article, and most likely it’ll cause no reaction, falling silently into the great still cybervoid. About one in three or four posts gets comments. The rest don’t.

So what am I doing here? Complaining? After all, this has nothing to do with self-help or motivation. Nope, not complaining at all… in fact, to those who do leave comments – I truly do thank you. It’s nice knowing when you notice, even when you’ve disagreed with me on occasion.

But to paraphrase Leslie Gore’s 60s hit single, “It’s my blog and I’ll bitch if I want to.”

Because lately I’ve been seeing a lot of new friends showing up at my blog, new visitors, eager to comment, who’ve never before been here. And they’re ready to tell me how great I am (though in a vague kind of way). The other day, somebody whose name sounded surprisingly like a medication left this comment:

….. I really like your blog and i respect your work.
….. I’ll be a frequent visitor.
….. (signed) ED and Cialis

That’s great, but you know, I’d feel more flattered if the URL for this visitor didn’t have “buy-viagra” in it. So I delete that sucker, kind remarks or no.

Then the very next one asks:

….. Interesting, did you plan to continue this article?
….. (signed) Worker

Huh? What continue? I thought I’d finished that particular article and posted the whole thing.

Curious, I followed the link back to the website, where I found an all-German-language site selling an astounding array of pain medications.

Ohhhh… I get it now… they think if they post vague, generic praise maybe I’ll mistake them for a real reader and approve their comment. Then they get a link back to their site. And this, in the trade, we call comment-spamming the hell out of every blog that crosses their radar.

Ya gotta wonder, though, how many blog owners that works on. Is there some poor, lonely shmuck out there somewhere who’ll approve this crap, knowing full well he’s being lied to? Maybe he simply decides it’s worth it so he – like some mousy little nebbish of a guy sneaking into a massage parlor – can pretend for a moment that somebody cares about him and what he writes?

Well, so far I’m not that attention-starved. So I’ll keep writing, and you can keep reading. You see, I know you’re there, even if you’re a little bit quiet, because the BullsEye site gets something like 10,000 visitors a month.  Quiet visitors, but visitors nonetheless.

So I’ll keep on doing what I’m doing, and you can do the same. You see, I infinitely prefer a silent but real reader over an insincere spammer who will never even read a word I write and only wants to use me for my back links.

Damned fortune hunters.

Meanwhile, I think we make a pretty good team, you and me.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles

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