The Expert:
The Expert
The number one way to spot an Internet @$$hole (referred to in the rest of this article as I.A.s) is to look on the potential turd-burglar’s Twitter page in the Bio section. If you see the word “expert” or “S.E.O.” or my favorite “S.E.O. Expert,” you have struck gold. You’ve come across the highest order of I.A. there is. If you follow them, drop them. If they follow you, block them. But for cryin’ out loud, don’t engage them – you’re just feeding wild animals that will eventually knock over your trash can and spill your garbage all over the driveway! Keep reading. There’s plenty more I.A.s out there to learn about.
The Lister:
The Lister
Situation: You come across a great looking blog that claims to be the “place to be” for Mac users. If you’re unsure if the site is run by a potential I.A., scroll down the home page. If you see more than two articles/posts with the words Top, List, or the first thing in the post title is a number, then you’ve most decidedly guessed correctly that the site is indeed run by an I.A. How many times do you really need to see the top ten list of Mac utilities, when every one of them has the same apps? Quicksilver (which has always sucked), Adium, Transmit, 1Password… the list goes on. 25 great blah, blahs. Top 10 widgets. 3,974 reasons to blah, blah. These I.A.s are doing this because “list” posts generally get a ton of hits, which they hope leads to a ton of ad-clicks. They’re also doing it because they don’t have a spec of writing talent, have no opinion of their own to share, and are just looking for link love from poor unsuspecting Tweeters. All they do is take other people’s work and put it in list form with a screenshot. God I hate this particular type of I.A. – they’re ruining the blogosphere for creatives and Mac users.
The Gatherer:
The Gatherer
You’ve probably seen it before if you’ve spent any amount of time on Facebook. You friend someone and take a look at their FB Wall. You notice they have 357 friends, so they must be interesting, right? You’re busy, you don’t have time to waste looking at another avatar do you? Make sure you’re not friending an I.A. Check their Wall. If it’s filled with updates informing you that they joined this fan page or that, and a slew of [potential I.A.] is now friends with [poor unsuspecting slob] updates and nothing else for the last two months; you’ve definitely come across an I.A. This particular form of I.A. is only interested in feeding their own ego by friending as many people as possible, but they generally have nothing of interest to say; thus, they’re a waste of your time. Drop ’em like their hot.
The Hype-o-matic:
The Hype-O-Matic
If you’ve been a Mac user for at least a couple years, you’ve probably heard of an app a while back called Disco. It was hyped-up to be the great freakin’ thing since the invention of the computer. In fact, even better! The hype machine started with a simple screen shot of an empty black window. That’s it. A few blog postings about how cool it was going to be, and some comments from a few trolls about how awesome it looked. Before you could roll your eyes, an animation appeared on the developer blog showing you that animated smoke appears on the top of the window as your CD is burning. AWESOME! I immediately smelled an I.A., but I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. After what seemed like 568 years, the app was finally released. It was offered all over the place, in bundles, discount sites, blah, blah, blah. It wasn’t long before everyone realized what many intelligent Mac users suspected. You were paying for little more than a simple CD burning app that did little more than any of the free apps available – other than it smoked. Of course, once we all realized the developer was an I.A., we found out why it smoked – cause it was going down in flames just as quickly as it went up. Beware of applications that get hyped-up before they’re even released to the public. More often than not, it’s the I.A.’s buddies who are doing all the hyping to begin with, and you’ll be out $15 and stuck with an I.A.app that never gets updated again. Evaaaaar!
The poor complainer leaving comments:
I don’t mean poor as in “oh you poor boy, you hurt your knee.” I mean, poor. As in the guy apparently doesn’t have two ever-freaking dimes to rub together, yet MUST have the latest OSX and Adobe Creative Suite upgrade, but spends what appears to be every waking moment of his life complaining about the price and how it should be half of whatever the price is, if not free!
This pathetic I.A. has apparently never been informed that you’re not forced to upgrade. It’s not a requirement, nor is it a owed to him. It’s simply an offer that the rational Mac user can determine is necessary or worth the money, then act on his or her decision. The complainer I.A. is easy to spot because no matter how much the shareware app costs, they think it should be about $10 to $5 million less. No matter what! If you have difficult spotting them, just look for their closing comment which is usually “if it were $XX I would buy it!”
The “I can’t make up my mind” blogger:
The Re-Designer
Ever see a link on the Web and you click it and it turns out to be a pretty good article? What do you do? You bookmark the site of course. For a while you check out the page weekly or even daily. You quickly notice though that this person seems to be more interested in re-designing their Web site or blog than actually writing anything worth while. It isn’t long before the header graphics are getting updated every week, buttons move, and post after post talking about how very special the new design will be. This I.A. apparently doesn’t know how valuable your time is, nor do they seem to grasp the concept that content (even in this day & age of fancy blog designs) is still king.
The “Twagger”:
The Twagger
This I.A. uses Twitter to do nothing but brag; thus, the name “Twagger.” They brag about their 1,000th follower, they brag about who’s following them, they beg (and then brag) when they’re 10 followers away from whatever the freak next big number is on their follower list. Newsflash jerkoff; nobody cares that you have 1,237 followers. Nobody cares when you’re only 10 followers away from 1,300. And nobody cares that you got your 1,500th follower while you were sleeping last night. You’re an I.A. Brag about that! And now that I’m on a roll about your particular type of I.A., let me just say that nobody cares that you just sold another ad spot on your blog, either. Oh, and while I’m thinking about it, nobody cares that Guy Kawasaki is following you. In case you didn’t notice, Guy Alltop Kawasaki Alltop follows Alltop everybody Alltop.
The “it’s free, but don’t use it” catch:
The Indian-Giver
I love free stuff. Especially when it comes to stock photos, background textures, vector art and Photoshop brushes. So when I see that someone is giving away something that looks great and I think I might use someday, I jump on it. If it’s really cool and I KNOW I’ll use it, I don’t mind paying for it either. Unfortunately, it only takes a few seconds to see that when they said it was FREE, they weren’t being totally honest. You spend a lot of your hard-earned time deciphering just what you’re really allowed to use it for. So here’s a little tutorial on what exactly these I.A.’s consider “free:”
- You’re free to seek written permission to use the icons before you use them – that is, if you can find my email address and it actually works
- You’re free to not alter them in any way
- You’re free to not resize them
- You’re free to link back to their site, or else!
- You’re free to not remove their stupid dog’s name from the icon
- You’re free to not use it commercially
That last one is my particular favorite. What the hell else would I use it for? Do you really think I’m going to decorate my desktop with your stupid icons? And what exactly constitutes commercial use? If I have Google Adsense ads on my blog, is that commercial? Do us all a favor, if you’re going to offer something free because you want to “share with the community,” then just make it free. Period. No catches. Otherwise you would make it much easier on us by just putting a big fat I.A. badge at the top of your Web site and charging a buck or five for it.
Class dismissed
I hope this little tutorial has assisted you in spotting the ever-present Internet @$$hole. If you come across a new breed of I.A., please feel free to add a description of them in the comments.