AttentionMax

I made two major mistakes on this blog in the past month or so. First, I wrote about my new car-buying experience — which I’ll follow up on later because horrible dealer service just about ruined the new-car experience, just three months after the purchase. Then I ranted about the social networks and how their ad-targeting is so elementary, evidenced by an onslaught of online-dating ads seemingly targeted at adolescents (unless they know me better than I know myself).

Why were these blog posts mistakes? Because I’ve attracted an onslaught of spam — both comments and trackbacks — from shady dating and auto sites trying to game the search engines and drive traffic and referrals.

Fortunately, Akismet is a darn good spam filter for AttentionMax. Still, I make it a habit to review everything in the spam box because there are some rare instances where legitimate comments are wrongly flagged. If these spammers would let up, life would be easier. Why do they do things that are not only unethical, but overtly shady, to the point where their actions make people hate them? I guess they’re making money.