Either you know the line from the Bard of Avon or you can look it up; the "dog" in question is none other than saddle-burr and content thief R-b-rt F------ (or possibly only someone who loves him very, very much) and his latest brain-spew -- the name rhymes with "Choke 'n Chunder" -- is "a whole new, new, new concept in blogging," gun-blog-as-social-media.
As new as 1995 -- or 1985.
You may have encountered this sort of thing when it was more slickly and collaboratively done, over a decade ago, by entities with names like "The High Road" and "The Firing Line," "AR15.com" or even "Democratic Underground." Or when it had names like "dial-up BBS" and blazed to your computer at up to 2400 Baud!
Yeah, like that, only with a pushier moderator and graphics that'll make you long for '85 and ANSI color.
This guy is lookin' for links. Good links, bad links, "Go see what a jerk he is" links, it doesn't make any difference; the links more his new site gets, the sexier it looks to search engines. Post there with a link back to your blog and that also counts. Follow a link there and that's a hit, and that helps, too. He's happy to tick folks off if it gets him links and hits; they're money in the bank.
I'm all in favor of people making money with their blog or whatonlineever. My blog is non-commercial 'cos my real job is for an outfit that's in the business of sellin' eyeballs and I don't care to compete with them in my spare time, but I have no problem renting Tam out my attic and getting paid, partially, in blogdollars.
I do object to bein' used, especially over guns by a guy who doesn't strike me as much of a gunnie; and I disdain content-piracy, using names and images without permission and jerks who try'n skate just inside the law.
If you do, too, you won't link to him or visit his sites. There's nothing of use there -- other than you. I'll bet you've got better uses for yourself than to be link-farmed by slick huckster.
Plenty of others have blogged about this, mentioning specific privacy and piracy concerns, but alas, they linked to the site in question. Don't do that! Kill them links! (Yeah, yeah, the clever have used "nofollow" but doesn't that still let the hit counter tick over?)
Let the site die in the dark.
You should get an award!
ReplyDeleteYeah, went there once to see what Unc' was talking about. Will not be going back, ever. And you should definitely get one of Unc's daily "Gun Blog of the Year" awards. I second the motion!
ReplyDeleteI went out of my way to not provide any hyperlinks back to the original site.
ReplyDeleteAnd, as I told Tam over at Barron's, Google loves it some keywords, and loves it some tags even more. Right now, my two posts about Choke and Chunder (love that, by the by) are on the front page of the Google returns for it, and if they can wave off innocents / people who are otherwise unawares, I am happy with that.
The good news is that we are too well entrenched to be bowled over easily. The bad news is that makes us vulnerable to character attacks and hijackings like he has perpetrated on us.
You remember that nonexistent blacklist of blogs that TTAG claimed to be on?
ReplyDeleteI think we need to make it a real blacklist and put two websites on it.
Went and tried to look around. Right up to where they wanted me to become a "member". Maybe they will die a horrible death.
ReplyDeleteI can't remember where in my blog wanderings today -that I came on one reputable blog that said he was a front the VPCP/japette people.
ReplyDeleteWhich from the examples I've seen make sense.
I first saw it at 'Walls of the City'
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wallsofthecity.net/2012/02/smoke-thunder-redirects-to-the-violence-policy-center.html
Which, I think links back to 'Snarky Bytes'.