Online Rejection Slips

This morning I read the latest entry on a blog I recently started following on Blogger. In her post, the author was gently yet tactfully asking me who the hell I was.

At first, I got my knickers in a twist when I read her piece. I thought, "Hey, honey, you've got 40 Blogger followers, and I've got one. Stop your bitching already!" The question she posed on her blog was "Are you using it as free advertising space?" Hmmm. That's a good question. I must admit that part of my desire to follow blogs is to get connected to others. I like to read the musings of other writers, see what everyone else is obsessing over, and generally get simpatico with other happy humans. And in the midst of all of that goodness, if a person or two finds my Serious Mojo blog and likes what they see, then all the better. If you want to call that "using it as free advertising space", then I guess I'm guilty as charged. Although one would wonder what the point of utilizing a social networking tool like Blogger is if you aren't intending to, um, network. Oh well. Different strokes for different folks.

After stewing in my own self-righteous juices for a few minutes, I realized how similar Li'l Miss FancyPants is to me. I must admit that I get a little miffed when people on Twitter suddenly start "following" me, only to find that they don't tweet at all, but merely have a single page advertisement that they want to hornswoggle unsuspecting readers like myself into viewing for those first critical decision-making seconds. That is guerrilla marketing at it's worst (or should I say Gorilla Marketing, as most of those unscrupulous hacks pound their chests, drag their knuckles on the ground, and generally make a stinky mess of the online world.) Just yesterday I had to send another flame-gram email to "R&P" (I'll be magnanimous and protect their vile reputations) to demand that they remove me from their email lists. I get stupid, silly promotional emails from them every day, all from new email addresses, so I haven't been able to block them (which I have tried multiple times to do). It's a violation, pure and simple, and there is an especially putrid room in Hades just for Spammers like them. Tsk, tsk, tsk!!

I'm not trying to use anyone by starting to follow them; I'm merely trying to get plugged into the community. I want to find funny, interesting people, enjoy their words, and hope that people cool enough to follow funny, interesting people may get a chance to see that I'm (sometimes) funny and interesting too. This latest digital dis' that I experienced is not unlike the social scene of the seventh grade. Either you were part of the "In" crowd or you were sooooooo "out". This morning, I felt like I knocked on the front door of a more popular girl's house for her birthday party, and she answered by snarling, "What are YOU doing here?" It didn't feel good back then, and it sure doesn't feel good today.

The good news is that I don't have to see FancyPants at school the next day, secretly wishing I could disappear into my locker so I don't have to endure any more gut-wrenching humiliation. Instead, I can do what I just did ten minutes ago: I can stop following that stuck-up bitch.

Blog this, sweetie! :)

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For your consideration and/or comment:

Do you add friends on MySpace, Facebook, Blogger, or other networking sites that you don't know? Why did you choose to?

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Visit www.TheresaRose.net to receive your Daily Dose of Mojo!

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