I am being pretty generous by using “spam” and “good people” in the same line, but I am trying to be forgiving. As surprising as it may seem, there are instances where otherwise good people will do spammy things which tarnish their business hopes. I don’t mean the canned meat, SPAM®, either. I mean the spam that happens when people try anything to get your attention.

I view spam as a desperate attempt to be productive while using counterproductive means.

When I say that it is an otherwise good person, it is often simply because they don’t know any better. They get confused by so much hype about the Internet, and end up doing spammy things that tarnish their business hopes, and hurt their chances for successful business communication.

Have you ever seen those social media profiles on Twitter, Facebook, or elsewhere that use a company name and logo instead of a human name and a photo? Of course you have seen those. Pepsi, Doritos, McDonalds, Ford Motor Company, and a good number of others do that.

What about those profiles that are based on some presumably important industry keywords? You can see those on Twitter, and even more prominently on blog comments, but not likely from successful companies.

If you don’t know what I mean, you can see some comments from people such as “Custom Logo Design” right here on my blog. I let some of those remain, when they are not offensive, and when they don’t just drop links to their agenda in the comment text. All the same, they are missing a much greater benefit. Until they learn the importance of human connection, they will never know just how much they don’t know.

I have been thinking about this topic for a long time. I tried to keep my inner voice to myself, but if you have read my blog before, you surely noticed that my inner voice has a bullhorn. I say what I think. I have said it before that “I do not try to please everybody, and that pleases some people very much.”

Call me a crusty old bastard if you like. Worse things have been said before, and you will not hurt my feelings. I only get my feelings hurt by people who care enough to create a meaningful dialog with me, and make a relationship. I welcome them to my table, and I will share my blog feast with them any day.

Conversely, trolls can have the corn preserved on the other side of my digestive system. Regarding lurkers, I kind of think of them like zombies. I am not sure if they have thoughts and feelings of their own, because they refuse to reveal them.

So what about the blog trolls and lurkers? I could take this examination to all new heights, because I know trolls, and I have enough lurkers to fill the Mariana Trench! Rather than drawing this out with a lengthy psychological analysis, I will just heave a heavy-handed slap in their direction and let you rip them a new one with your comments if you feel up to it.

You hate spam, I hate spam … we all hate spam. Right?
I spend a lot of time reading, researching, and finding out about stuff. I like knowing things. While I am reading, learning, and soaking in the glory of this Information Superhighway we have all built together, I encounter a lot of spam. Don’t we all?
We all want it to feel like a global community and we all want to know more about people, things, places and more. We find out how different we are, and we find out how similar we are. We find out what others like, and [...]