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.
Duk Linh Mobile Phones of Vietnam just like the personal feel of my blog. They’re all about my occasional anecdotes.
Vietnamese acetylene tanks love me cuz my art is so fiery hot.And I mean ALL Vietnamese Acetylene tanks love me!Mannugal Sehat “health massage” and “body scrub” are on the edge of their seat for my next political commentaries.Falcon Upholstery is all over my blog, because my shit is plush!Imodium follows me in case I have diarrhea! OK, their url is immodiumabuser, so, it must be a joke, but I still don’t think they are really following me (otherwise they would find themselves in this post and tell me they aren’t another bogus follower.Thinks I’m a bell end, but follows me just to take the piss.Half-way to 666, “333 Acre” likes me because they think I’m half-witted enough to use their services.Vedic Astrology predicts my “Year of Art” is going to turn out fabulously. Thank you Vedic Astrology.Pondoknangrinta sells property somewhere in the world, and, well, I live somewhere in the world, so we are like all symbiotic and ying and yang ‘n shit. Plus I like her name, and that counts for something.Bisofficiallan follows me, yes they do. What do you get if you cross an elephant and a rhino? Eliphino. Eliphino why they follow me or what the hell they are about.Book Hub, Inc. follows me because they want to help me find God through Jehovah, which spelled backwards is “Havohej”, though that appears to have no significance, intrinsic or otherwise.“Your Erotic Nights” follows me, but I don’t want them to follow me too closely because of their whole proclivity for “wet humping”.The secret of “How to be liked by everyone” is the same as “How to be found out by enterprising businesses and followed by them on WordPress.com”. They are pilfering answers from me, the bastards.Oh yeah! I’m goin’ ta Oman, business class. And they knew it at “Cheap Airfare”.“Glo Spa by Gigi” loves my skin. They just LOVE it because it’s smooth as a baby’s bottom.The “121 Sports Clinic in Surrey” follows me because they will catch me if I fall, lick and then bandage my wounds (unless I get kicked in the nads or something along those lines). Uh, that only applies in Surrey though, and, they must know something I don’t because I have no plans of going to Surrey.Zirconia Philippines follows me because I live in Thailand, which is also tropical, and, well, they accurately surmised that I am in possession of teeth. Might need one pulled. Might end up in the Philippines. You never know with fate.Dermatologist’s Garden doesn’t want me to have acne. But if I get it they encourage me to stab it with the sharp end of a piece of aloe vera.Cuz I live in Thailand. Hey, I can read what it says under “Promotion”. It reads, “samrap luuk ka tuk taan”. My best guess at a translation would be, “for customers every time.”
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.
Art & Crit by Eric Wayne 
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.
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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.
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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