Frustrated social-media serotonin hit

The message says @bissell http://bit.ly/xqysd -- now I know it's spam, I noticed the idea years ago (see Twitter Followers Don't Matter), but what really bugs me is just how much it bugs me when I get these stupid little spammy messages.

I get a little, albeit juvenile, 'social-media serotonin hit' when someone mentions me on twitter, or likes something I said on Facebook. The fact that I know my desire to be liked and mentioned is juvenile adds a little level of guilty pleasure to feeling a mild pitter patter when I see I've been mentioned somewhere.

So I get a double whammy when these spammy twitter posters post an obvious link to an ad -- first I'm genuinely disappointed that it was a fake, that it wasn't even a human being a but a script somewhere that didn't care a whit about me and tried to trick me into following a stupid, possibly dangerous, link.

Then I'm disappointed with myself for being disappointed. I mean, geeze, what am I, 12? Why should it bug me that some bot tried to scam me -- I never fall for it, and I just block the account so they can't do it again and, hopefully, they get blocked entirely.

But as I hit that block, I feel a stupid rage in my belly. It's the kind of rage a man gets when he can't fight or fly -- I want to do some harm to that programmer, or I want him to just leave me the hell alone, and I can't get him to do either. As soon as I block this account, his clever programming will just start posting from another account.

I could, I suppose, direct my anger at Twitter itself -- they really should have something in place to find the patterns that these programs are using. Let's see… 0 followers, following no one, 500 nearly identical posts except for the @accountname… seems easy enough. But I know that it's a never ending game -- as soon as you close one loophole, the spammers find another hole.

If the moderate high you get from putting yourself out there doesn't balance out the mild annoyance of being hounded by idiots and bots on Twitter, (because no matter how mature or enlightened you are, something is gonna bug you at some point), then you probably shouldn't be a rock star.

Or an amateur tweeter/blooger… At least rock stars get paid for their stories when the paparazzi hounds them….