One of the small annoyances of having a blog is when other people spam the blog to market their crap with a comment that says something like “generic lip service unrelated to actual post. http://www.mycrappyproduct.com” Yesterday a diet company owned by two women named Donna and Tora did this in the most tacky way possible. They provided the perfect opportunity to call this behavior out, and to play with gifs which I’ve been wanting to do for a while Here’s what happened:
I get tacky comments on two of my blog posts from them (website removed throughout to avoid unnecessary publicity):
“Great article. Your writing style is very pleasing to read. http://www.ourdietwebsite.com”;
“Great tips, thanks a bunch for sharing your blog site. http://www.ourdietwebsite.com”;
“Thanks a bunch for sharing your blog site”? WTF does that even mean? So I go to their website and send them an e-mail:
Hello ladies,
I just dropped by to tell you how completely unprofessional and tacky I find it that you spammed my blog about completing a marathon as a way to attempt to market your product.
I imagine if your product worked as well as you say it does you wouldn’t feel the need to “market” by spamming legitimate bloggers.
Since you take great pride in answering every e-mail I’ll look forward to hearing back from you on your reasons for engaging in such an unprofessional practice.
Sincerely,
Ragen Chastain
www.danceswithfat.org
I get a return e-mail:
Hi Ragen
I’m sorry but I have no idea what you’re talking about?
Tora
I e-mail back:
Here are the screen shots of the comments.
~Ragen
Suddenly, they DO have an idea what I’m talking about:
Sorry to hear that you consider a comment spam. It looks like you are able to approve or not approve comments on your blog, so feel free to not include the comment on your site.
Many thanks
Tora
I finished up the conversation:
Of course I’ve already made sure that the comments will stay off the site and that your e-mails and ip addresses are reported for spam. I just wanted to give you some direct feedback on your unprofessional tactics.
~Ragen
This is your community too, if you have thoughts about Donna and Tora spamming this space to sell us their weight loss crap product, feel free to send your feedback to [email protected]
Just a final point, every time I talk about something this this, someone feels the need to come along and tell me that I should have just ignored it. I think that ignoring it allows tacky spammy diet peddlers to operate without consequences so I’ll pass on the ignoring it option, though of course I totally support those who choose it for themselves.
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If my selling things on the blog makes you uncomfortable, you might want to check out this post. Thanks for reading! ~Ragen
