No one is reading ...

I'm scared to comment anywhere.

Several of my fave bloggers have had to resort to protected/hidden blogs for various reasons and I worry that I may accidentally *out* them.  Plus, I read via feeds so tend to forget to click through, no, not really forget, it's usually for the reasons below. I get frustrated and then forget what I was going to type OR change my mind about posting it in case it sounds stupid/rude etc. While self censorship is not a bad thing that some people should excercise more of while online, it's not always a good thing either.

Isn't it interesting that something that promised so much in terms of freeing our lives up so that we have more free time to socialise in fact ties us up longer in trying to get to the goal of actually doing the socialising. In the time it takes me to read, then navigate to a comment section, then navigate the catchpa and log in repeatedly [ Yes, Blogger, that is YOU I am especially evilly squinting at! Fix the bloody login.] just to add my 10c worth, it takes so bloody long that I've forgotten what my 10c was and/or it's value has gone down.

So many blogs & sites now require you to log in just to comment and really, who can remember all the different usernames/passwords, so you then wonder how the hell you managed to remember stuff before computers and their handy *Remember Me* which doesn't work if you delete your cookies or are on a different page of the site when you try to log in.

So, pretty much I say nothing and let people wonder who the visitor was that reads all the time and says nothing. I am one of the noone's.

Which brings me to this...

I keep seeing that phrase mentioned on blogs I read. The owner laments that *no one* is reading, when what they should be saying is no one is commenting and ask themselves Why?  Obviously if I found them and read it, then someone is reading.

The answer is simple really and has nothing to do with their writing style, personality or if they're one of the popular kids. So many abandon their blogs etc because they think noone cares.

 We're being spammed into oblivion.

I often think the solution to spam is not chasing down the spammers but get the dipshits who respond to them and make it worth their while to keep spamming.

It's gotten to the stage where you never know if someone has actually gotten your email or comments or we don't bother because of the hoops we have to jump through just to communicate. The avalanche of spam that results from putting your email address or blog link for the harvesters to find is the Interwebs birth control.

My personal fave is emails from me to me that I obviously sent while my other personality took over to sell myself some p*nis* extending product or v**gra [ See! can't even type out whole words now or there'll be more spam.] or how to buy pirated software [Interesting that they expect me to pay them for it though]

I know I have some who visit here on a regular basis and have never commented or have and been accidentally consigned to Spam Hell. So, Hi! Thanks for visiting :-)