Farming Hits for Real Gold

Congratulations, click here to win a fanciful shimmering prize. Ah, you clicked - what a douchebag, I can’t believe people fall for this! What you don’t know is that we have furtively installed some spyware, and if you happen to be using internet explorer a keylogger, to aid you in some online banking, just think of us as your helpful, friendly financial advisers. If you decide to visit our offices, I hope you like the fresh-air in Nigeria.

That’s just scratching the surface, everyone knows about the spam wars - just check your inbox to catch up on whose winning. There is no denying it’s getting worse, pollugooglers (say it three times super fast - I already loathe the term!) are polluting the internet and who do we blame, them, Google or both? Should Google be doing more to help combat spam at the cost of their own profits?

Google is guilty, their Adsense has revolutionized online advertising and streams of income whizzes to and fro’ and they’re responsible for a lot of this pollution and it reeks. Polluters are making Google rich through adsense ads and people click on the shit, but it isn’t always their fault - I don’t have to use Google, but I do because they offer other services that are beneficial to my e-life, but there is no denying Google’s Pollution is out of control. In some ways, you could compare it to a game, even a mmog, but with real money - high scores or levels will equal a better score or payout and many players are cheating and scamming. Click, clack, click and away.

There is a tinge of irony in my post, some people believe anyone who blogs is polluting the internet with tripe, but at least in my case I’m not ripping anyone off or manipulating Google to boast my own hits - not yet anyway. (A-hah, I’mma put up some gold ads and make me enough money to buy a scrumptious glazed donut. mhhmmm) I’m rambling at this point, my real purpose is to listen to Jeff Freeman, a blogging gumshoe (I bet he has the hat with the feather) shares a little investigative prodding on his part and exposes that someone fairly nefarious and well known to anyone who has followed the big names behind gold-farming (cough Yantis) has progressed from instead of buying fansites to more or less destroying mmog news results by exploiting Google.

What do I do, what can you do? If you don’t use a rss feed-reader to read blogs, you should, that’s how I filter a lot of information and I can’t extol Virgin Worlds enough. It’s a fantastic place if you are looking for hand-picked tidbits about mmog’s from a myriad of blogs and other sources, topped-off every week with an informative podcast. It’s more broad than specific, meaning you won’t see many links to every single change and patch and news reel, but if you’re interested in keeping up, it gots’ the goods. Thanks Brent and everyone else for all your hard work and dedication, maybe you guys should put up some ads. haha.