Like flies to crap, Spammy Twitter Followers don't really go away

Twitter is filling up with the kind of annoying people who you avoid at parties like the guy with the stack of business cards whose only small-talk is lifted from a textbook on how to 'engage the prospect.' When I asked on Twitter what we should call these people in Twitter parlance (Spamters? Spweeters? Twammers?), @Lelonopo responded simply, 'We call them lame asses.'

So after some sake and ouzo last night, I started blocking a few of the more obvious advertising followers. What was interesting was that as I started to complain on Twitter about the idiot Twitter-spammers, more started following me. Like swatting flies, or maybe blood in the water to sharks (but I hate to elevate these people to shark status), as I got rid of some, others would show up.

Of course, the reason for this is bots following key words, so if I start talking about idiots selling weight loss products, their programs will see 'weight loss' and automatically follow me. What surprises me is how many people follow these annoying bots; but then, Twitter rewards getting followers by letting you follow even more people (you can only follow 2,000 people, unless you get 2,000 people to follow you, then you have to maintain some kind of ratio to keep following more).

So people let the bots follow them, and maybe even encourage them. It's a weird world where people encourage spammy advertisers to talk to them…