An Open Letter to Jackasses Wasting My Time on Twitter:

[azurelunatic]

HEY TWITS.

If you've come here as the result of my sending this link to you on Twitter, you are not my friend, I don't want to be your friend, and this means you. You've already wasted enough of my time, and I'd sooner punch you in the face than look at you.

Twitter is where I come to relax. I follow friends, entertainment, and news and services that I think are relevant to my interests.

If you think the majority of the below describes you:

Web 2.0 SEO entrepreneur marketing fresh monetizing social media driven self-promotion viral marketing branding synergy strategic solutions self-starting savvy leader profitable market share

...I am probably going to block and report your ass for spam faster than you can say 'Google page ranking'.

I do not want you; I do not like you; I may even actively want your business to fail. Hell, I want your entire soulsucking industry to go down in flames like the biggest dot-com bomb that ever sprayed itself down with gasoline then lit up a smoke just as the gasoline vapor/air mixture reached the exact optimum for an explosion that would make all five MythBusters green with envy.

I do not want to buy your shit. I do not want to be told that I need to buy your shit. I do not want to be subjected to your assault on my psyche to attempt to convince me that I will be miserable without your shit. I do not want to share tips and tricks on how to get marks to bite your baited hooks, and I resent being mistaken for anything that you would consider a colleague. I do not appreciate brute force without elegance. I am not in your target market, and I violently resent you attempting to place me in it.

If attention is the currency of the internet, and you have come to my attention and I find that you have wasted my time, rest assured that it is not because I am paying attention to you, it is because you have mugged some of my attention from me, and I am going to do as much intellectual violence as I can to you in the shortest length of time that I can, and I am going to enjoy doing it. Feel lucky that one minute is more time than I feel like wasting on you, and I'm going to devote it to being as effective as possible at getting you out of my life and everyone else's.

Comments

[synecdochic]

COSIGNED

[stultiloquentia]

*haz no Twitter* 'splainy? Once you've finished wreaking your intellectual violence, of course.

[azurelunatic]

The people who fall for pyramid schemes and get-rich-quick things have moved on to "10 never-fail tricks to get your website noticed by Google despite that it actually isn't very interesting", and suchlike, and they're doing it on Twitter.

[jecook]

Damn Skippy.

I keep a quart of kerosene by the phone expressly for burning telemarketers that have the gall to call me.

[jld]

Yes. This.

[shihadchick]

AMEN to this. Heck yes.

[havocthecat]

YES. THIS. EXACTLY.

[profit]

You have no idea how irritating it is to me that these people consider themselves "businesspersons". And I, too, will cosign this note.

It ought to be a letter of marque and reprisal. (That last part is [++++IMPORTANT].)

[fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com]

I do not want to buy your shit. I do not want to be told that I need to buy your shit.
For some reason I kept reading that as "I do not want to buy your shirt."

[azurelunatic]

And I'm sure some of them have Print-on-Demand shirt shops too!

[lady-angelina.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Twitter spam, and not of the typical kind that's fun to read. X_x It's like these asshats have sunk to a new low.

What will they come up with next? Spam via video game consoles with wireless access? It's more than bad enough that I get occasional SMS text messages from spammers -- they're making me PAY to read their crap (or at least that would be the case if I didn't have a text messaging plan that I rarely come close to exhausting every month).

[wibbble]

WE get spam sent to the company fax machine. One we got on Friday was from a company offering BEST PRICES!!! on... printer and fax ink.

Evil. Fucking. Bastards.

[lady-angelina.livejournal.com]

"Is fax machine spam wasting your toner and paper? NO PROBLEM! Just call this TOLL-FREE only not really because the area code is actually in another country but is one digit off from a true toll-free area code in your area number, and we'll give you GREAT DEALS again, only not really but we word it to make it look like such on toner and paper so that we can keep sending you EVEN MORE of our GREAT OFFERS!"

By that, I mean, yes, I totally concur.

[wibbble]

Most of what we get is 'GREAT DEALS ON COMPANY MOBILE CONTRACTS!!!' and people offering to put OUR LOGO!!! on shirts and caps.

All goes straight into recycling. Utterly futile.

[lady-angelina.livejournal.com]

I don't work next to a fax machine anymore, so I don't see that as much. But there was one near my desk where I used to work, so I got to be the first one to pick up the faxes from it. And the junk faxes would run the gamut from "LOWER YOUR MORTGAGE RATE!" to "LEARN TO SELL REAL ESTATE IN ONE MONTH!" to "FLY TO CANCUN FOR ONLY $100!" The vacation ones were the ones we got the most. =P There were a few from local restaurants spamming their menus, as well, but at least that was better targeted, since some of us ate at those places.

Yes, exactly. D: What makes this sad is that SOMEONE out there has to be heeding these, or fax spammers would have quit a long time ago, I'd think. And that "call this number to get removed from our list" rarely ever works and turns out to be counterproductive.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

We haven't gotten junk faxes for years now. The first time we get one, we call the number (not the opt-out, the order or product line) and say:

"We do investigations. We're also in California. We buy our office supplies using the money we make suing people who fax us. Take us off your list. This has been your only warning."

Some good advice here:

http://www.junkfax.org/fax/basic_info/junk_fax_qa.htm

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

*golfclap* Well played.

[azurelunatic]

The newest low that I've heard of is things with precisely-directed audio that appears to be coming from the inside of the listener's head. As if regular audio is not bad enough.

[lady-angelina.livejournal.com]

...What on earth?! O__o; Now that's just downright scary. How do they do that? Does it only work with headphones when someone is listening to the radio?

[wibbble]

There's a thing called an 'audio spotlight', which is highly directional/targeted audio. Needs special equipment, but it does have potential for confusing the fuck right out of someone.

Not sure if that's a useful marketing strategy, though.