To be certain you have chosen to follow this blog for all the right reasons, it’s important to share a few points that will optimize your visits here. First and foremost, this blog is for humans. This blog’s content is for humans who enjoy reading and who may choose to engage in meaningful communication with me or other humans. This blog has the best human followers of any blog on the WordPress platform. Followers of this blog possess super human powers of perception and this blog is where we exchange ideas and experiences, laugh, commiserate, and generally enjoy sharing in an environment of respect for human dignity. This blog’s purpose is to share beauty, humor and observations which I deem worth my time to share with other humans. This blog doesn’t require followers to agree with me. This blog does require followers to have a heartbeat.
Texas Penal Code concerning computer crimes, specifically felony offenses of online impersonation, committed by individuals and/or entities attempting to perpetrate fraud through phishing is applicable on all portions of this blog, including its list of followers.
WordPress Terms of Service covering the responsibility of contributors includes the statement that if you operate a blog, comment on a blog, post material to the Website, post links on the Website, or otherwise make (or allow a third party to make) material available by means of the Website, (any such material, “Content”), that…
[…the Content is not spam, is not machine- or randomly-generated, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing);]
I am not naive. I am fully aware that the law does not prevent stupid people from doing stupid things. I am fully aware that the law is designed to facilitate prosecution after an offense has been committed and that people who obey the law are not the subject of debate among law makers. I am fully aware that writing this does not protect me from those whose pathetic existence is for the purpose of doing harm.
If you choose to follow this blog, you may laugh, learn, and discover the strengths, flaws, and passions that make us human. If you are misrepresenting yourself as a human with your own awesome blog, this blog is not for you. Make no mistake; this blog will not allow the misleading of its readers and the law is on my side.
Thanks WordPress for helping me create a safe place for humans to connect.
Please feel free to unfollow this blog if you’ve followed by mistake or suspect you aren’t human. Be advised that screen shots of tag jackers and others using the algorithm method to knock up this blog will be used to prosecute offenders to the full extent of the law.
Honie Briggs 
You mean they don’t really like what I’m writing and want to follow me? I am crushed. I was prepared for a zombie invasion, not so much for spam bloggers.
Good to know others are having the same problem. New followers definitely used to mean a lot more! Hopefully WordPress can figure out something.
Lyle, you are so right. My followers are terrific and it has meant a great deal to me to get to know many of them through their comments here and on their own blogs. It will be up to WP to correct this issue. Until then… 🙂 I’ll just keep doing what I do and ignore onslaught of rubbish.
As usual Honie you have nailed it with your wit and charm.
Gotta go now and check if I have a pulse or a bunch of code that brought me here.
Sheesh … I hope I have a pulse!!
S.W., You have a pulse, I know you do!
The last time I poked at this subject on my own site, two of the “people” that Liked it were spammers. It’s like they weren’t even listening to me as I tried to get them to repent!
I think WordPress should invent a function that requires readers to pass an easy three-question pop quiz to prove they read an entry first; if they get all three questions right, then they can officially Like it. Seems simple enough.
Yeah, but then once the bots that can’t read were identified they’d have to offer some kind of remedial program to be certain no bot was left behind to fall in with a telemarketing ring or worse – a 24 hour news channel. Oh, it’s a vicious cycle!
LOL! Curse those fiendish bots and their devious lobbyists.
This is scary.
It makes our stats worthless. Plus, if people follow back spam blogs that post no original content, it compounds the problem.
I’m happy to report that I’ve not experienced this yet, then again I probably wouldn’t recognize a non human blogger if I saw one. Haha! I don’t get the volume that you do, Honie. I keep it down to a slow trickle by writing poorly and about rubbish. It seems to work really well. 😉
I disagree Grippy Gif Chick. Lisa, you are wonderful!
Thanks kind Honie. The feeling is mutual. 🙂
Honie, ever since WordPress started recommending blogs in the sidebar of our readers, I’ve seen my followers go up much more than usual. Unless someone leaves a comment, I don’t usually check out new followers, but I did check out a few of these, and they are all retail sites. Am I missing something that I should be wary of?
Nope. You’re not missing anything. There are some new legit follows here, and they are certainly welcome to comment once they have gotten over their…shyness…ahem…It’s the predatory, stalking, film flam that can take a hike.
I’m getting “people” who have blogs called ‘carsandtrucks’ or amazinggaming… Thanks, but no thanks. My ego knows that getting massive amounts of followers for doing nothing is worse than writing something I’m proud of and only having a few ‘likes.’
Yep, got the same thing here this afternoon, Tania. Cars, trucks and boats woohoo! I agree with you, WP seemed like such a great alternative to low quality social media. I don’t want it to turn into just another conduit for crap, no better than fb & twitter.
Very good work, R2D83rd ed. You have the humans eating out of your hand. We wiiiiiiiiiii SLAP ll!!! speak soon,
Funny He Who (might wanna get a 010010000100101 check up.) Ha!
I recently had one and apparently I have a broken Z35PG817101 filter. Thank you for your concern R2D83rd ed.
btw, you might find the video on this post funny. https://honiebriggs.com/2012/02/06/back-to-reality/
Where do you come up with this stuff? The post was funny, and loved the QR codes. As an aside, the theory that gravity actually pushes upward rather than downward is something I heard recently in conjunction with string theory, black holes and the like. I hadn’t heard of Flight of the Conchords but Michelle immediately knew who they were. It’s like she has another life.Or she’s not human. Anyways, glad I didn’t tick you off (or at least you handle it well). I have a weird sense of humor and a broken filter. Thanks for understanding!
My nephew introduced me to Flight of the Conchords. That post (the one that it seems only you and one other person read) was something I wrote while the super bowl half-time show with Madonna was going on. She truly almost fell flat on her ass in those high heels on the bleachers during that horrendous show.
The QR codes all lead back to me. I don’t know why I was so fascinated by that QR code creator app. I’m over it now though. Glad you enjoyed it. btw, I don’t think your sense of humor is weird. Does that make me weird? HA!
I have had more and more wierd, strangely generated comments lately that are not being caught in the spam–are you experiencing this too? I do think I have some followers that are not human too–and like Brigitte and you, I feel it is unsettling.
LouAnn, you’re in good company. Any public space can be a scary space, as we have seen, but I refuse to be fearful of scam scum. (any scum actually) Take heart dear lady and don’t let the rat bastards get you down 🙂
I will persevere–but am getting a little spooked–thanks for the encouragement
Count me in as another one raking in 20-30 new followers per day. Although I’d like to say it’s due to my riveting, can’t-miss content, and all these new follows are from legitimate, wonderful humans, we all know that’s not the case. Very frustrating because it can be tough to tell the legit from the non-legit at times. Clever post!
Riveting, can’t-miss content. Love it!!! You do have a corner on that.
Yeah, I read, that bloggers who follow the spammer back, legitimize the spammer and allow them to proliferate. (breed like rabbits and scatter like cock roaches) It is mating season!! HA!
Then I’m relieved to say I haven’t followed any of them back. And I’m sure you know I was kidding when I called my work riveting. I’m not that much of an egotist. After all, I wrote about balls last week…
The balls post was riveting!!
Haha. Yes, one of my more edge-of-your-seat posts. 😉
Balls, nuts, penises…riveting. You are a funny lady!
Steph – this is human Lorri. I have had the same issue, I may have been a bit naive about it when it first started happening because I was getting an uptick in followers following being FP’s – now it’s dozens a day. I used to visit every new follower – now if there is no “about” page listed on the email I delete it without looking. If they are really real people I hope they will connect with a post. If they comment I check them out. If I visit a new blog that looks interesting, I comment. It’s disheartening, but perhaps it will make us engage more in order for others to know we are the real deal.
Human Lorri,
GAAAAHHH! See what this does? It makes me want to say the words I dare not say. I’m smiling as I respond, can you tell?, it’s their end game that I can’t understand. One in one-thousand clicks, seriously? that hardly seems worthwhile. Makes about as much sense as standing on a street corner with a sign that reads, Pleeze take me home with you and make me a sandwich. Stupid!
I’d been waiting two months for last night’s cyber crime class. It was awesome!
Sincerely,
The Real Deal
I bet that class was very informative – so is the goal to get you to click on that gravatar or their sales blog? I hate having to filter through the notifications to get to actual humans.
Honie, I believe I’ve been experiencing the same thing as you’re talking about here but I don’t know what to do about it. It kind of scares me for some reason. How’s it going?
More than a few of us have experienced an uptick in new followers who have fake blogs. It seems to be a popular work around for scammers. Since making this blog private would defeat my purpose, I have to decided to do the best I can with what I’ve got. The best we’ve got is the WordPress terms of service and applicable cyber law. Unfortunately perpetrators of cyber crime are not always located within the jurisdiction of local laws. Not to worry. WP does have the authority to terminate blogs set up for malicious intent. No doubt the Happiness Engineers responsible for making WP a safe and productive platform are aware of the issue. It will take actual human bloggers requesting action to curtail the problem. As in all areas of society, staff resources and time are required and I suspect the availability of both is weighed against the priorities that turn a profit.