Like most bloggers, I get my fair share of email, it comes with the territory and is to be expected.
There are the nice folks who are of course friendly and are simply pinging you to say ‘hi’, or just to encourage and wish you well, or perhaps offer a few hints and tips.
Then there are the daft folks with too much free time who deem you to be the dark side of the force and write to explain where you have gone wrong. I get it, I have written something they disagree with and so they simply wish to vent and blow off a bit of steam.
There are also the religious folks who wish to convert you. The fact that the previous 999,999 attempts failed to convince me does not dissuade them in any way, because only they have the truth and so obviously the others simply did not spell out the facts clearly enough.
Ah but the above is not the complete list because there is also a very special category of complete twats who send stuff like this …
Hi,
I was browsing the web when I saw your site, and when I looked at it Enjoyed the content, would you mid if I offer you a link exchange … yada-yada-yada.
Yep, I am being invited to help spam something. Now the fact is, I do not do ads, I do not accept sponsorship and I do not even ask for donations, all expenses come out of my own pocket and I have no interest in changing that. I blog what I blog because it either interests or enrages me. I make all this clear, and yet these invites pour in.
Do not take this the wrong way, because If I was approached with …
“Hi Dave, I’m also a skeptic/atheist/freethinker/science blogger etc… I like your site and so I have linked to it. Just thought you might like to know and if interested here is my blog where I write similar stuff and thought you might like to add me to your list of similar blogs” …
well, that would be cool, and I would be quite happy with that.
But no, that is not what is on offer. As an example, the latest one of these I got today was the suggestion that I, a skeptical science blogger, might like to promote a link to a psychic advice web site. Such emails lead to a whole host of thoughts such as :
- WTF!
- What exactly did he “enjoy” about my site, was it the psychic debunking or the astrology debunking!!!
I get it of course, it is just a spam email sent at random to a million other sites by some bot, but still, it deserves a special category called “Complete Twat”.