Here is a sampling of my followers on wordpress.com. There are many more like this. In fact, I have over 400 followers, 90% of which I can be confident are bogus. They are just businesses or individuals spamming to get people to visit their blogs. It’s all just a little depressing. I deserve better than this, except for the Imodium, which I happen to have used within the last two weeks. In reality my blog is reaching hardly anyone. Below are screenshots I converted to Jpegs and cropped for your viewing pleasure.
If you like this, click on the “like” button or even “share” this shit, so I know this didn’t just go out into the cyber ether via over 300 bogus “followers”.
Here’s a gallery of my 20 most fabulous followers. Click on any image to go into the gallery.
You don’t strike me as an opportunistic business just hitting follow randomly to attract people to your blog. Oh, are you suggesting that computers are doing the following automatically. That’s even worse than I thought.
I hope it’s computers.
I’d hate to think some poor sucker has a job doing this kind of stuff.
As you might guess I got a lot of follows and likes today. I haven’t had the chance to check all of them but a random sample indicates maybe 10-20% of the likes and 30-50% of the follows are fakes. I don’t reckon my previous rate topped 10% for either.
I’ve also checked out some of the other ‘freshly pressed’ posts today and see they’re getting pretty much the same phoney likes I am.
Smells like bots to me.
Great that you can read Thai. I managed to get my spoken Thai up to phrasebook level during my roughly two years there but never got further than numbers when it comes to the script. Got a funny story of trying to get from Krabi to Wat Tham Seua on my early efforts at spoken Thai. I’ll have to post it some day.
BTW, I guess it’s inevitable that some day I’m going to find out what ‘twerking’ means (I know it’s got something to do with Miley Cyrus). But for now I’d rather not be enlightened.
Oh, so it’s not even people. That sucks. Gotta’ come up with new strategies to get an audience.
You also learned some Thai. Reading and writing are difficult because of their insane writing system with no spaces between words, no caps, and really weird rules about the order of letters. Speaking is somewhat easier. Just another small thing we have in common, along with liking lizards.
Oh my, we have overlap! WTF does my blog about random emotions/thoughts have to do with Vietnamese acetyline anyway? Exactly as much as yours, I’m guessing.
At least one of those you listed is real and not-sales (although it sounds that way). It’s just plain creepy. I’ll leave it unidentified because I feel mysterious.
Cool. Be mysterious. So, the Vietnamese acetylene tanks are following you, too. They got good taste. I’ll give them that. Is the one that isn’t sales the “wet hump” one? I just threw that in because I thought it was funny. I also don’t think they are following me, just trying to attract people to follow them. Figure if you follow a few thousand people, you’ll probably get a few dozen following you back. All you have to do is click on follow. Probably do 2-3 per second.
WordPress needs to figure out how to stop the spam followers. I thought I had a lot of followers, but, actually, it’s only a handful or so.
I got a couple of likes on ‘Ugly Innovations in Spam” that came in less than 10 mins apart and both link to real blogs of US women who are part of an online marketing cult called A.W.O.L.
I just hope they actually read the post – particularly my Douglas Adams semi-plagiarism about marketers – and were being incredibly ironic with their ‘likes’.
Something makes me think not. But, you should get loads of likes and crap form your “Freshly Pressed” designation. When “Imodium” follows you, that might be a sign.
Hey, I picked up immodiumabuser as a follower and checked out his blog.
You’re doing the guy a grave injustice here.
He’s actually original and pretty funny.
Yeah, David Orange tipped me off on that one. That is real. But, he didn’t notice he was featured among my bogus followers, which could mean that, uh, uh, uh, he doesn’t follow my blog.
I just did a post urging my online followers who are with a multi-level marketing scam called A.W.O.L. to chuck it in before they’re responsible for even more people getting conned.
Within half an hour I’d picked up two new followers.
Both were with rival online marketing scams.
Checking out some of my recent followers I’m finding a surprising number who work as search engine optimisers.
I’m not sure if they think I might hire them to get my blog to the top of search tables or whether they think following my blog will get their own further up the search lists.
BTW, I reckon the best of all WordPress feedback I get is the search terms people use to find my blog. Some are tragic, some are flattering, some crack me up and others are just weird.
I’m starting to now wonder if more than 90% of my “followers” are bogus. For example, if I have over 500 “followers” and I put up a post that gets 8 views… I have to wonder.
I think they are just doing vast sweeps of following people in the hopes that people visit their site and pay to use their services. Worpress doesn’t really show how many people one follows, so I gather you could follow tens of thousands just as a way to get more exposure.
I actually use the reader, and I don’t like “unfollowing” people, so, I’m hesitant to add new follows. I actually need to cull a little.
Relieved to see I wasn’t on the list.
I’ve never been able to get the hang of those Turing tests.
LikeLike
You don’t strike me as an opportunistic business just hitting follow randomly to attract people to your blog. Oh, are you suggesting that computers are doing the following automatically. That’s even worse than I thought.
LikeLike
I hope it’s computers.
I’d hate to think some poor sucker has a job doing this kind of stuff.
As you might guess I got a lot of follows and likes today. I haven’t had the chance to check all of them but a random sample indicates maybe 10-20% of the likes and 30-50% of the follows are fakes. I don’t reckon my previous rate topped 10% for either.
I’ve also checked out some of the other ‘freshly pressed’ posts today and see they’re getting pretty much the same phoney likes I am.
Smells like bots to me.
Great that you can read Thai. I managed to get my spoken Thai up to phrasebook level during my roughly two years there but never got further than numbers when it comes to the script. Got a funny story of trying to get from Krabi to Wat Tham Seua on my early efforts at spoken Thai. I’ll have to post it some day.
BTW, I guess it’s inevitable that some day I’m going to find out what ‘twerking’ means (I know it’s got something to do with Miley Cyrus). But for now I’d rather not be enlightened.
LikeLike
Twerking is booty dancing.
Oh, so it’s not even people. That sucks. Gotta’ come up with new strategies to get an audience.
You also learned some Thai. Reading and writing are difficult because of their insane writing system with no spaces between words, no caps, and really weird rules about the order of letters. Speaking is somewhat easier. Just another small thing we have in common, along with liking lizards.
LikeLike
Oh my, we have overlap! WTF does my blog about random emotions/thoughts have to do with Vietnamese acetyline anyway? Exactly as much as yours, I’m guessing.
At least one of those you listed is real and not-sales (although it sounds that way). It’s just plain creepy. I’ll leave it unidentified because I feel mysterious.
LikeLike
Cool. Be mysterious. So, the Vietnamese acetylene tanks are following you, too. They got good taste. I’ll give them that. Is the one that isn’t sales the “wet hump” one? I just threw that in because I thought it was funny. I also don’t think they are following me, just trying to attract people to follow them. Figure if you follow a few thousand people, you’ll probably get a few dozen following you back. All you have to do is click on follow. Probably do 2-3 per second.
WordPress needs to figure out how to stop the spam followers. I thought I had a lot of followers, but, actually, it’s only a handful or so.
LikeLike
I got a couple of likes on ‘Ugly Innovations in Spam” that came in less than 10 mins apart and both link to real blogs of US women who are part of an online marketing cult called A.W.O.L.
I just hope they actually read the post – particularly my Douglas Adams semi-plagiarism about marketers – and were being incredibly ironic with their ‘likes’.
LikeLike
Something makes me think not. But, you should get loads of likes and crap form your “Freshly Pressed” designation. When “Imodium” follows you, that might be a sign.
LikeLike
If Imodium follows me I’m probably gonna need it.
LikeLike
Hey, I picked up immodiumabuser as a follower and checked out his blog.
You’re doing the guy a grave injustice here.
He’s actually original and pretty funny.
LikeLike
Yeah, David Orange tipped me off on that one. That is real. But, he didn’t notice he was featured among my bogus followers, which could mean that, uh, uh, uh, he doesn’t follow my blog.
LikeLike
It’s Imodium. It’s just odd.
LikeLike
You must have a lot of time on your hands if you are looking at your spam followers! Crazy.
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I just did a post urging my online followers who are with a multi-level marketing scam called A.W.O.L. to chuck it in before they’re responsible for even more people getting conned.
Within half an hour I’d picked up two new followers.
Both were with rival online marketing scams.
You just can’t beat pyramid power I guess.
LikeLike
Yeah, I keep getting more bogus followers. I’m not even sure if I can say 10% are real anymore.
LikeLike
Checking out some of my recent followers I’m finding a surprising number who work as search engine optimisers.
I’m not sure if they think I might hire them to get my blog to the top of search tables or whether they think following my blog will get their own further up the search lists.
BTW, I reckon the best of all WordPress feedback I get is the search terms people use to find my blog. Some are tragic, some are flattering, some crack me up and others are just weird.
LikeLike
I’m starting to now wonder if more than 90% of my “followers” are bogus. For example, if I have over 500 “followers” and I put up a post that gets 8 views… I have to wonder.
I think they are just doing vast sweeps of following people in the hopes that people visit their site and pay to use their services. Worpress doesn’t really show how many people one follows, so I gather you could follow tens of thousands just as a way to get more exposure.
I actually use the reader, and I don’t like “unfollowing” people, so, I’m hesitant to add new follows. I actually need to cull a little.
LikeLike