I admit it. I submitted a crappy domain to a social media site and got banned. A social media “friend” IM’ed me a link and asked for a favor submitting it, so I did without paying attention to how spammy the site was. My “friend” then proceeded to go on a IM vote requesting campaign that was pretty obvious to anyone that may have been monitoring the submission at the site. I got banned and for good reason. What makes me different than the vast majority of people banned on various social media sites is I can recognize my mistake and admit what I did was wrong.
I’m starting to see more and more blog posts written by angry banned users that range from the naive to the utterly ridiculous. Most play the “Who? Me?” angle and flatly refuse to see any wrong doing on their part. Justifying their blatant pimping for certain sites as sharing “quality” and “contributing great content to the community”. I suspect somewhere in the inner depths of their minds they know they probably did a little too much pimping and not enough real contributing, but would never admit it publicly and risk being labeled a spammer. They take a mostly non-confrontational approach in the hopes of someone seeing their cries for help and somehow getting the ban lifted so they can happily go back to spamming their blog.
The second type of banned user is the uber-pissed off, “I’m gonna make you pay!” type that decides to burn bridges and make threats. These are usually people that have a financial stake in driving traffic and, having lost another source to do so, are extremely angry and want revenge. Their blog posts whining about the ban usually begin like the “Who?Me?” types with self-righteous attempts at telling everyone how great the content they contributed was, but then they veer off into the insane. Everything from bad PR to boycotts has been threatened by these cry babies that absolutely refuse to see anything they may have done as wrong. Feeble attempts at generating bad PR or organizing boycotts of sites YOU ARE ALREADY BANNED FROM are stupid and a waste of time. Typically these posts are commented on and shared by other banned users that are similarly butt hurt over their bans as well, and it turns into one big cluster fuck of lame.
Look in the mirror people. If you’re submitting a blog to Reddit that’s on a subdomain of a spammy site, you deserve to be banned. If you’re sharing four or five things a day on StumbleUpon, regardless if you have any vested interest in them or not, you’re annoying and deserve to be banned. If you blantantly work an IM for a Digg submission that’s obviously from a crappy site, yes, you too, deserve to be banned. Instead of whining about it, why not repent and change your ways? Sadly, I think I know why. It would take time and effort. Time and effort you used to spend on gaming the system and it worked. Now that it doesn’t work anymore, you’re left to face the truth. And sometimes the truth hurts.
Update: 8-6-09 – The “soft ban” has been lifted from my Reddit account after I tweeted @knOthing (one of the co-founders) with this article. I plan on purchasing a Reddit T-shirt and posting a photo of me wearing it here. : )
Post Submitted by ED. Check out all of ED’s thoughts at his blog: http://yeeaauuh.com
