Hi and welcome back to the TEMPLE. Do you like my new pics at the top of the page? I hope so. I do. It kinda encapsulates what I am doing here – that is, offering all sorts of resources to help you and others in your ongoing journey in Internet Marketing and/or blogging.

I hope you have been enjoying my Internet Marketing Tips videos too. I have five of them up now and many more to follow. Keep an eye out for them coz some are serious and some are frivolous and just poke fun at things. That’s me. I can’t be serious all the time. But today I want to be serious.

Oh… oh. That usually means… RANT coming! Well, not really but close to it.

You see, today I want to talk about blog hijackers.

What’s a blog hijacker? A blog hijacker is like a graffiti idiot. They come to a blog with the intention of spraying their invective bile all over everyone and everything. They make disparaging and often completely incorrect comments in a feeble attempt to “take over” the purpose and intent of the blog. In other words, they just want to disrupt everybody from the target of the blog. Most often they attempt this by trying to “take down” the blog owner – to make him or her look foolish to the blog owner’s readers.

Blog hijackers nit-pick on things like innocent comments or even spelling mistakes. They are hecklers.

Yesterday I was at a blog belonging to an aquaintance of mine, Dean Holland (Deano and I were in Las Vegas together in May/June this year), who is trying to help people understand the miasma of Internet Marketing. I think Dean is doing a pretty good job. But then…

… along comes “Mike.” Well, I doubt if that is his real name but that is what he called himself.

Mike’s sole intention was to hijack Dean’s blog with snide remarks, rudeness and smart-alec comments. If you are interested enough you can see what was said here: www.DeanHolland.com. But please read on first…

I have seen this type of miserable behavior before. Many times, in fact. Such individuals think (erroneously, I might add) that if they can take down the King or the Queen (ie the blog owner) that they can assume some sort of leadership or importance mantle. But it almost always backfires and simply makes them look foolish.

It’s a classic case of an individual attempting to disrupt a project by hijacking it to place all the emphasis on himself (or herself – but it is usually males who do this). It’s a matter of low self-worth and low self-esteem manifesting itself through jealousy.

When such an individual feels in his or her own mind that he or she cannot be part of a group moving forward they attempt to strike back by shredding the sails and throwing out the anchor. They sabotage the group by whatever means possible.

We see this often with disruptive junior students in classrooms across the country. Unfortunately, there are older people – who should know better – but have never grown out of this negative mindset. [Maybe they should study my "Mindset" e-book... but of course, they wouldn't do that. Their mindset just wouldn't allow it]

These hijackers attempt to divert attention away from the direction and focus of the group by being critical – often over the most trivial of issues. In the case above, Mike attempted to belittle Dean for mis-spelling the word bonanza. However, in doing so he committed his own literary gaffe. I won’t go into what that was here but he also told everyone that they were “blowing smoke up each other’s backsides.” Then, when he was castigated for that, he did what MOST of these types do. He then assumed (incorrectly) that he was the victim and told his own critic, “not to get personal.” Duh!

This is also a common trait of these people – they can give it but they cannot take it. But worse than that here is what happens:

The “Mike’s” of this world are given a second chance and sometimes they “play along” for a little while. But what they really want to do is divide and conquer. They want some of the visitors/readers to take their side with the empathetic/sympathetic approach. They like nothing more than for other commenters to start FLAME WARS against each other. This is their intention. They want the focus to be on their poor behavior. And when they can achieve factional camps within the blog then they are well on their way to the disruption that the initial criticism set out to achieve.

Some months ago, I watched negatively inspired people attempt to hijack Mike Filsaime’s Butterfly Marketing 2.0 launch during his live streaming. There were some people at that event who were hell-bent on ONE THING only – taking Mike Filsaime down. Why? Same reasons – low self-esteem manifesting itself as extreme jealously.

When the negative ones can get people focussed on their own ridiculous sideshows then they feel satisfied with their usual miserable existence. They re-inforce their own negative mindsets. Their equilibrium is restored.

If they are not banned from the discussion then they just keep needling away enough to keep the two emerging factions (those “sympathetic” towards the aggravator and those aggravated by the aggravator) watching all comments like hawks to see who says what. This keeps the entire sideshow simmering away in the background.

The best thing to do (after ONE opportunity has been given to ameliorate poor behaviour on a blog) is to remove the errant individual. Fair criticism is OK. However, blog hijack is something entirely different.

Michel Fortin of www.michelfortin.com and Christopher Knight of www.ezinearticles.com have stated many times on their respective blogs that their blogs are NOT democracies. And that’s fair enough.

Owners invest a LOT of time and money into their blogs. What rights do interlopers have to come and attempt to destroy all that work?

Quite simply, if somebody doesn’t like a website or a blog then they should just STAY AWAY!

So, after all that… what do you think? Remember, I’m open to well-placed disagreement but, as the blog owner here, I also have the “dump button.”
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[PS: BTW... Mike, if you come here via my link on Dean's blog you can defend your actions. However, if you try that garbage that you pulled on over there with Dean then I'll do what he did and it will be sayonara to you.]

Filed under: Blog • Gary Simpson • blog hijacker • blogging • internet marketing

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