Get me those page views, baby!

Mr Stupi Tidiot is hell bent on boosting his page views and unique visits to his site. See, he’s got Google Ads plastered all over the show and depends on it. He writes a bunch of crap, but he sure as hell don’t care as long as he gets them visitors, baby! It will make him money. Probably lots of it as he writes such torturing drivel from the pits of stupidity hell that most people would do anything to get away from it and end up clicking the first link they say, albeit an advertisement.

So Mr Stupi Tidiot is happy. He lights up big fat cigars while the cheques keep rolling in. And then Social news was born. Digg, Reddit and Muti amongst them. Now, you can call him stupid, but never call him an idiot! He can spot an opportunity miles away! “Bloody hell, these idiots (I’m mos not one, mos) make it just too damn easy!”, he says. “I’ve got a cunning plan, Sire…”, he thinks to himself.

Off he goes and plasters 10 times more ads on his site, writes a classic one liner linking to another classic one liner he wrote a couple of months ago which links… ack, you get the picture, right? He submits it to every social bookmarking / social news site known to man, gets his little tent and goes to camp on the pavement in front of his local Post Office (or as he likes to think about it “My local Gold Mine”), waiting for his next cheque. Meantime he is annoying Mr Cleve Roke and his friends on the other side of the spectrum.

So does Mr Stupi Tidiot get his next cheque? Is it more than his previous one? Truth be told, I don’t really know. It could be, as there are quite a lot of the Tidiots in the world. The thing is, Mr Stupi Tidiot is an idiot. He lives for today. He’s in it for a quick buck, not worrying about who thinks what. Good luck with your stupid venture, idiot.

The real problem is this. As long as ads are going to be sold and the law of averages does not change, you will always find the Tidiots lurking around. Valueless drivel. Subzero crap. You might think “I’ll write about the sucker. I’ll take him down to Chinatown. I’ve got a blog and a voice and I’ll tell the world what an idiot this guy is”. It would not matter. He is ruthless and thick skinned and would simply start again elsewhere.

So how do you deal with this? What can you do? Yes, report the sucker. Bury his stories on Digg. Don’t vote it up on Muti. All valid options, but in the end not stopping Mr Tidiot from starting again under another alias or url. The best you can possibly do is to start learning how to ignore these idiots completely, put him out of business by not giving him enough page views, deprive him and starve him to death. Make sure you don’t give him what he needs. If you do end up on his site, don’t panic! Simply use your browser’s buttons to navigate away. If he sees he is not gaining page views from a specific social service, he will go elsewhere.

People are growing up in the online space. Very slowly, but surely nevertheless. They are starting to see the value aspect. They will eventually try to tap more value out of it than they would try to tap page views. They would see that in the long run, spin–offs from valuable contributions are way more than the quick buck that could be made today. They would become a Mr Cleve Roke and would learn to hate all the Stupi Tidiots of the world. So while Google, Yahoo and others work on special algorithms trying to keep Mr Tidiot at bay, you need to do your part by not feeding the animals.