Top 10 Commenting Sins of All Time!

The other day I was a victim of Comment Terrorism by a couple of wannabe probloggers. You know the type. Those who blog for money promising fame and fortune to their servile followers.

The problem is most of them (if any) rarely deliver on their promises. They also hate me because I blog the truth about making money blogging, and the ethics they are sorely lacking.

Brief Background

I’ve listed the top blog commenting mistakes near the bottom of this post. I think it’s important you are aware of events that led me to writing this article in the first place. But if you are not interested in the gory details you can jump directly to the list here.

So here we go. You will enjoy this because it’s funny (or at least I think it is).

Recently a blogger that I know wrote a post on the topic of SEO whose conclusions were strikingly similar to an article that I had just posted not long ago. His post intrigued me because we’ve previously had discussions on this very same topic and as I recall he was a little wishy-washy at the time.

He’s a regular reader of this blog and it’s not the first time that I’ve had other bloggers “bounce off” my posts without linking to me. But it didn’t really matter to me because I’ve known this blogger for a couple of years and we were on friendly terms (or so I thought).

He’s a Super Geek, Super Geek Y’all

Since he prides himself as a geek of geeks, for simplicity’s sake I shall refer to him as ‘Super Geek’ for the rest of this article.

So when I stumbled on his post I decided to pay him a visit and leave a comment. Heck, why not I thought to myself. I like to visit blogs and support them when I can and I figured he was due.

I want to stress here that I left a very nice comment and I was on-topic. However, unbeknownst to me at the time Super Geek is also friendly with a pro-splogger type who had trashed me on his blog not so long ago.

Enter Mr. Nutbar

Frankly, it was the most bizarre experience that I have ever had in all my years of blogging. His attack was not only extremely virulent, but it was neurotic and borderline psychotic.

He (hereinafter referred to as Mr. Nutbar) accused me of trying to steal his readers by leaving a comment on his blog.

Huh?

Again, I want to stress that my comment was on-topic and nice.

Mr. Nutbar also went into a tirade about my niche. So I invited him to correct me if it was a problem for him, but instead he just continued with his malicious (and personal) attack.

You see, Mr. Nutbar read my post on how to identify blog scammers that I had just written and apparently the content hit a little too close to home for him. So he went berserk on me.

Fast forward again to Super Geek

It was just my luck that Mr. Nutbar was out trolling the night I visited Super Geek. Since this neurotic crazy person is a friend of Super Geek (and being the good troll that he is) Mr. Nutbar couldn’t resist getting in on the action and left a sarcastic comment to pick up where he left off on his blog. 

But to make matters worse Super Geek also chided in support of Mr. Nutbar’s (off-topic) attack. The next thing you know I found myself in the middle of a free-for-all swarming by the prosploggers.

So that’s the thanks I get for supporting Super Geek’s blog over the years. Well at least now I know where I stand.

The moral of this story is money talks and friendship walks.

Because Mr. Nutbar had tempted Super Geek over to the dark side of blogging for money, apparently old loyalties became null and void.  

This time I decided to fight back and I let them have it with both barrels. Anybody who knows me also knows that I can dish it out better than most, and when the dust settled I was the last man standing.

Nevertheless, the episode was unsavory as far as I’m concerned because it was stupid and I lost what I thought was a blogging friendship. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the experience.

The Saga Continues

The next day I noticed that Mr. Nutbar had subscribed to me on Twitter. A nice thing that I like about Twitter is I can block the trolls.

So that’s what I did … click!

SWEET!

Who needs them? I sure don’t.

I’m not going to give their names or provide links here because they’re not worth mentioning. I don’t want to encourage trolls over here or give them traffic they don’t deserve. No doubt they will read this anyway and they know who they are.

But I have learned something from this experience

As always, I try to turn a negative experience into a positive observation from which my readers can learn.

In the past I have been a user of the contrarian method of blogging (and it’s not called the ART of contrarian blogging for no reason). But that’s not what I’m talking about here.

When you’re in an extremely competitive niche like I am things can get a little hot, and there will always be jerks (pardon my french) out there who want to take you down.

Especially if you are successful and offer a different opinion on a topic as near and dear as “money”.

The Wrong Way to Leverage Your Blog

They will try to leverage off your success in a negative way to make you look bad, and thereby (hopefully) making themselves look good in the process. (At least that’s the theory anyway).

Super Geek has been leveraging off me for as long as I’ve known him, and this isn’t the first time that he’s tried to publicly humiliate me. But I always gave him the benefit of the doubt and I let it slide until now.

But no more.

I don’t mind constructive criticism or someone injecting a little tongue-in-cheek humor, but there was nothing intelligent or erudite about this attack at all. It was personal and malicious, by a sleazy dufus with a keyboard and nothing better to do.

Unfortunately for them their plan backfired. 

Looking Back On It All

What hurt me the most about this episode is I was a good friend to Super Geek. I supported him when his blogs were going nowhere. I gave him advice, encouraged him when he was down and even linked to him when it hurt my pagerank.

But that is all in the past now. Fool me once — shame on you. Fool me twice — shame on me.

It won’t happen again. Promise.

Thou Shalt Not Commit Comment Terrorism

Despite the fact that Mr. Nutbar did most of the attacking Super Geek is guilty of aiding and abetting the crime. Perhaps even more so for being such a sanctimonious hypocrite about it.

See No Evil … Hear No Evil …

From what I know of Mr. Nutbar it could be said his foolishness was just a bad case of immaturity. A quality that he seems to have in abundance. But as for Super Geek there is no excuse. He should know better.

In so doing they have committed the top 10 commenting mistakes of all time. Having said that it’s now time to get to the reason for this post.

Here are the Top 10 Blog Commenting Sins in all their ugly glory:

1. Do NOT make off-topic comments to rant against a reader for your own personal reasons.
2. You should stay on-topic when commenting and steer your readers back to the conversation when they take it off-topic.
3. You should never condone, encourage or engage trolls to attack your readers.
4. It’s not a good idea to make personal attacks — PERIOD, especially against readers who have supported you. (Even more especially if they haven’t said anything that could be deemed confrontational or deserving of your wrath.)
5. OR in other words – Do Not Bite the Hand that Feeds.
6. If you want to leverage off another blogger then do so intelligently and not in a mean spirited fashion. (Especially NOT off-topic in your comments section.) There are better ways for doing that.
7. Imagine what your readers will think. They will be afraid to leave a comment fearing that they may be next on your hit list.
8. Your comments section is not a subversive tool for you to blindside readers with Comment Terrorism.
9. Pursue your personal agenda elsewhere if you must, and use the proper tool if you have a beef … like email for instance.
10. Otherwise you just end up looking like an asshole with an axe to grind.

To commit any of these commenting sins is death by STUPICIDE.

It’s too bad. I’m sure that Mr. Nutbar and Super Geek have turned off what few readers they may have already had.

Both of these bloggers are losers because I will never subscribe to them, leave a comment, link to them or read their blogs again. As far as I’m concerned they don’t even exist.

Good riddance to bad rubbish I say. You guys owe me an apology.

On the other hand thanks for helping me come up with these blog tips for the top 10 commenting mistakes of all time.

P.s.: I thought you might like to read this article by TechCrunch called the “Ten Comments You Think Are Cool And Insightful But Aren’t“.

Touché.

Can you relate? Care to share your own experiences?

UPDATE: Although it might not be commenting related I thought it would be fun to mention the day after I published this article, Darren Rowse came up with this blog post: “10 Ways to Find Readers for Your Blog By LEVERAGING Other Online Presence“. So nice of him to “bounce off” my posts (again) and I’m really glad to be of assistance … but DUDE! Where’s my link?