How to be a Douchebag.
Normally, I reserve names such as these when referring to…
…people who beat children and/or spouses.
…people that think civil, or even human rights are “quaint”
…people that go out of their way to shit on others without reasonable justification.
But tonight, it becomes more than a moral obligation to point this waste of internet space out…
…it becomes an absolute pleasure.
Now you have to know a little tech first. You see, I’ve been administering over 10 domains (not including subs) for a long long time. When I first started blogging and transcribing my journals into my blog, I also set up an aggregation site on a sub-domain of TonyTown so that I could read all my news without going to anyone else, or having to surf like mad to so many sites. In doing this, I didn’t realize the RSS feeds were being indexed by the big search engines, which is in fact a pretty huge screw-up on my part. But I screwed up more. This same sub-domain/site is also where I tested out plugins for WordPress. One of these was the first original TonyTown twitter account, which I have also not used or looked at in ages, but was taking it’s queue from posts on the news feed.
Bottom line…All my RSS feeds for The Onion, BitRebels, CNN, Natalie Tran, Ars Technica, Gizmodo and Scientific American they were being posted as linked articles on the aggregation site on my sub-domain. This reeks of techno-babble, but the bottom line is that the articles were getting regurgitated through my sub-domain. This is very bad etiquette on the net. Well, let me rephrase, it is very bad etiquette to re-post content without some level of permission from the publisher.
This was totally me. I never realized the site was searchable, and didn’t know the stupid twitter feed was attached to it.
The part that makes me want to write about this though, is how I was approached about it. This insane low-life self-anointed waste of internet space starts spamming the absolute hell out of my personal twitter account (non-direct, for all the public to see) with completely unnecessary hashes (tags like #douchebag etc) and foul language. There are children who watch that feed. Not to mention a few news sites, WORK, etc…and this guy didn’t even bother emailing me.
I have to point out something here…this guy, out of the 13000 links aggregated, owned…wait for it… 7 articles. They weren’t even really articles. After reading them, I found them to be more or less absolutely useless amounts of regurgitated music babble about who’s hot and who’s not. Even funnier…he hadn’t posted to BitRebels in months, which was the actual publisher of the content.
You see the pleasure of not being in this for the money is this is 100% opinion. This winner could have easily just messaged me but started off the conversation by calling me a Twat…and THEN telling me to remove his content from my site.
Foul-mouthed Tweet #1 “Hey you TWAT! Remove immediately MY POSTS from your so called blog #XXXXingDouchebag”
Thoughts/Reaction #1 – “Wow, this guy is nuts…I don’t rip others content.”
Foul Mouthed Tweet #2 “@XXXXXXXXXXX Just look at the whole thing, [he] is stealing content from @gizmodo, @theonion, @bitrebels and Scientific American.”
Thoughts/Reaction #2 – “Wow, this nut is angry about something. Wait…those are on my aggregator”
At this time…I am trying to figure out how this guy even knows that feed is there. Remember, I haven’t even looked at it in ages, I didn’t even have the password for it.
Foul-mouthed Tweet #3 Sent to his buddy: “People like this [ME] that steals content from others really piss me off. Sorry for the language…”
Thoughts/Reaction #3 – “Why is he spamming Twitter instead of emailing me? Oh…this guy apologizes to his friend for saying PISSES…but wont bother to contact me properly.”
–Friend in California texts me to let me know the activity is on the radar *AWESOME* (not)–
Foul-mouthed Tweet #4 “That is MY CONTENT you XXXHOLE!”
Thoughts/Reaction #4 – By this time I’d found the problem (i.e. me being a dumbass) and apologized to him for the problem.
Foul-mouthed Tweet #4,5,6,7 – “I don’t say they are mine, they are mine you XXXXing douchebag! Just search for [Insert Foulmouthed Asshat’s Name Here] on your site and DELETE IT!”
–Two more people letting me know there is some guy flaming the hells out of me on twitter–
By this time…honestly…nothing I tried to say I was doing was getting through. I had already moved the aggregation access to another undocumented and unsearchable domain AND fixed the twittering silliness, but this guy was now spamming others and continuing on his little rant.
By then a tiny little minuscule spec of the Twitter community…that is ONE of his followers/friends RETELLS his complaint long after I’d already rectified the situation.
I’ve been using that feed for years without a PEEP from the other sites. Yes, the activity it was performing by allowing itself to be searchable was very bad net-etiquette. Yes, my completely forgetting there was a Twitter feed attached to it…yep, all me – my fault.
But you sir. You’re a Twitter Guru right? So in your vast repertoire of blog-knowledge did it occur to you that I might have just screwed up? Because if I were leeching content deliberately…do you honestly think I would pull content from…BitRebels?! Seriously?! I read your articles, (they’re shit) and it makes me glad I didn’t bother trying to get on with BitRebels when they started…because if you’re half the egotistical asshat in person that you come off as on Twitter, I’d probably create a website dedicated to your vastly unreasonable and offensive attitude with people on the net….which by the way…isn’t copyrighted.
The real funny, is after he’s apparently satisfied his insanely valueless content is no longer available via my news portal…he goes on to start another fight with another guy on Twitter about…of all things…how lame his blog posts and intellect is. The guy…none other than Robert Scoble of http://scobleizer.com. This is about the equivalent of Joe the Plumber telling Steve Jobs how to market the iPhone. Yeah. Winner. You. Are. Not.
Finally going to get some rest on this though. Hope everyone had a great night.
-Tony
