Crazy Quilt: (memoir) stitching life's tales together any which way

Fishing for Compliments

For years I've blogged every week or so. Usually I'd post my latest piece of flash fiction in order to display my specialty as an author, hoping interest would pick up and perhaps snowball. But I got very few comments or any other kind of interest.

When my web host discontinued their proprietary blog application, they let their web clients transfer all their previous entries over to WordPress for free, wrapped into the hosting package.

I liked Wordpress at first. Lots of cool new functions. Much better visibility, as the net's premiere blogging application. And best of all, I started getting comments right away! I clicked on the first, full of enthusiasm to see what kind of feedback I'd get.

Swift slide from enthusiasm to bewilderment. The comment made no sense. It didn't relate at all to the tale I'd posted. It seemed to be aimed at an instructional post, giving mild critique and offering help on future entries. Plus several links.

I'm not foolish enough to click on links that wriggle in out of nowhere, like sharks to a carcass.

The next comment was merely a variation on the first. As was the third, and the fourth.

A week or two later I got a bizarre comment: Same flavor as the earlier ones, but in paragraph after disjointed paragraph.

Ah, must be a novice phishing commenter, I surmised. The fellow had just been recruited and given this list of possible comments to make, but not understanding a word of English, he just sent the whole kit and caboodle as one comment.

That's what you get for allowing the phishies to nibble at your toes as you dabble in the wide, blue, blogging sea.

Lesson learned. Commenting now disengaged.