Recurrent Patter

“The only things ordained for you — teach yourself to be at one with those. (39)

• Excerpt From: Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius. “Meditations.” Book # VI

Over and over, I get these messages, typically e-mail. While not an exact copy, let’s give this a try:

“Hi! Hope you’re doing well. I noticed on your site — (insert site title here) — that you had a link to (something or other, maybe topical, maybe just spurious crap).
“I represent/own/run a site that has an article just like that, and would be honored/pleased/begging if you would link to it, maybe replace that old, out-of-date link?
“Please let me know what you think! And good work on the site!”
(signed)

&c.

This is nefarious, cloying communique. I paused one afternoon, and responded with my typical single-link answer, advertising on astrofish.net.

“Thou forward, stubborn-hard, lout!” (Shakespeare)

The one time — some poor soul tried to answer me back with an explanation that they weren’t looking to advertise, just a friendly link back, to correct an error I obviously made. Furthermore, they were doing this out of the goodness of their wee little hearts.

“The first liar never gets a chance.”

Clicked through to the aforementioned site. Yes, it was properly laid out with a 300-word article explaining the basic principles of what the original link was for, yeah, got that, but above, to the side, and at the bottom of the text block was advertising. Looked like Google Ad Words, but I didn’t tarry on the site. It might advertise the author as a life coach, or expert in some field, I don’t recall, maybe “Buy my books.”

If we play that game? Buy my books!

One of the requests like this was fairly clever, as it referenced a blog posting from 2005 with a link to a site that is no longer there.

Again, this is not new material, but the places that keep asking for a link because I linked to similar article?

“But we’ll promote your site to our many thousands of social media followers, too!”
I have — maybe, at most — a little under a hundred followers on social media, Twitter, instagram, &c.. Perhaps three respond, so that’s a 3% return. Of those “many thousands,” advertised, most of them are bought and ignored? Less response.

Seriously, send me some traffic, first, then I’ll update that link. But I need proof that it works. Not “hits,” but “butts in seats,” sometimes referred to as paying customers. Do that? We can do some business. Need some cash inflow to justify that exchange.

Consider, too, that the person sending the e-mail found me — I didn’t go looking for them. It was only a cursory examination that revealed their sites were thinly-veiled profit-oriented businesses, with their shady skill-sets and dubious practices.
Me? I’m transparent.

Recurrent Patter

The other e-mail I’ve been getting far too many of?

Hi!
My name is blah-blah-blah, and I want to write and article for your site (insert site title here) about blah-blah-blah.

From there, there are two version, one is for paid placement of an article, and the other is for me letting them provide content for my sites. As in, “I’ll write an article for your blog, and we won’t even charge you for it!
Do just a modicum of research. There are four, maybe five authors listed as contributors, and those are all variations of my own name. Indeed, publicly? It should be my name displayed, in full, Kramer Wetzel. One person is the author. There are no other authors. There are no ghost writers. There are no other people — just me. That simple.
So, before you ask, think about looking, first.
How about, “Look both ways before crossing the street.”
See fineprint for details and rules, terms.

Hint

I do my own stunts, too. Watch this!

Footnote —

The sites, I’m still getting these type of messages for site like SkyFriday.com, astrofish.net/xenon, astrofish.blog, and other dead media, cf., concatenate.
Marcus Aurelius (Loeb Classical Library)
Delphi Complete Works of Marcus Aurelius – Marcus Aurelius
Meditations – Marcus Aurelius & Gregory Hays
Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library)
As always a free version is hosted on astrofish.net right here.
#media