Blogging is about communication.  And communication can bring out the best and the worst in people, especially in the so-called anonymity of being online.  In this scenario, bullies can appear to flourish.

My sister (never one for thinking before she speaks) has got herself involved in a bit of a flame war, with a guy well-known for using bullying tactics.

The result is that, not only has she been verbally abused, she has been openly threatened (and although I know that’s a strong word to use, I have seen the evidence).

Evidently, one loud-mouthed MMO ‘guru’ didn’t like her questioning his tactics.  So now he is saying he can affect her online income if he chooses to do so.

He has been quite specific too.  Without ever saying he will do this, of course.  The guy isn’t quite the dickhead he comes across as.

My advise to her has to be "Shut the fuck up.  This guy is an arrogant bully, who obviously gets a hardon from bullying people.  Arguing with him isn’t worth the effort."

I’ll admit that thoughts of self-preservation are high on my list here, as I share hosting and sites with my sister and have a family to feed from the proceeds.

Perhaps some serious ass licking is in order.

Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure my sister will not listen to me.  She hates bullies as much as I do.  And, although both of us need to protect our online income, whereas my answer is to keep my head down, hers is to fight back, guns blazing.  She even has an avatar for this!

The guy in question says he is pretty powerful.  I see no reason to question that.

In fact, cowardly as it may seem, I see no reason to question anyone online.  It’s just not worth it.  And the only time I did, it came back to bite both me and my sister in the ass.  She has never let me forget it, telling me to STFU.

Nevertheless, this ‘rule’ does not appear to apply to her.

My sister believes in questioning people for all their motives.  I’ve told her many times she should set up a site for this. 

Of course, that would depend on whether she has any hosting left after the bully has finished with her…

Arguing with an online bully never turns out well.  There are no winners.  Each ’side’ thinks they are in the right and cannot be persuaded otherwise.  Because the bully is more powerful, he usually ‘wins’ – at least in his eyes.  But I’m not so sure he really does.

Online bullying is usually dominated by men.  Perhaps it’s a ‘male ego’ thing?  Or just that it makes them feel hard, taking pot shots at the opposition?  Perhaps they even jerk off while thinking about how they ‘hit their target’?

I’ll go back to building my adult sites now, and hope not to get hit by the shrapnel as my sister goes into battle against the bully.

But if this site goes down, you may well assume it was taken down when it became an unwitting victim of bullying online.

Sox Related posts:

1. The Online Rule Of The Idiot How Do You Cope With Stupid Belligerent Bullies On the...

I have many blogs and websites, some good, some absolute crap (I had to learn somewhere ).  When I began working on the net, I hovered for a while, reading other blogs and forums and anywhere I could find helpful (rather than crap) information, and then I dived into an adult webmaster’s forum and asked some questions.

Several people answered and one in particular gave me a fair bit of help.  That help came at the price of signing up for some of his sponsors, but I reckoned that was very fair exchange and hoped I would later on be able to make this worth his while.

My ‘mentor’ wasn’t always around when he had ‘promised’ he would be, but I’m not the complaining type.  I just got on and learned more how to do things myself.

After a while, I reached the stage many of us reach in a new career.  I knew I was doing some things wrong (hardly any sales), so I asked for help on the forum I had gone to originally.

My mentor rushed to the rescue as if he had never disappeared, offered me very good advice, and then went on his way, with the promise to be in touch the very next day with even more help (I hadn’t asked by the way).

Of course, that ‘follow up help’ never materialised, but then I had never expected it would.  I was happy enough with the help I had received and, with the extra advice and more of my own research, eventually my ‘little business’ took off.

However, I have always thought of this guy as ‘my mentor’, despite the fact I know other mentors who help people much more and actually keep their promises.  I am pretty self sufficient anyway.  I believe you learn more that way.  And he had been there to help at the times I needed help the most.

So, as far as I am concerned, he was my mentor and I guess I will always feel that way.

I always knew this guy was a bit of a rogue.  Nothing criminal, but willing to ‘bend the rules’ to suit him and his needs and definitely ‘cut throat’ when he needed to be.  But then, aren’t most successful business men (and women) like that anyway?

In any case, by that time, he knew I was smart and he did appear to have some respect for me.

But then the economy took a nose dive.

And now, my ‘mentor’ is using his ‘business methods’ in an even more cut throat way.  Again, nothing criminal – just not good for the unwary.

I guess he must be finding things harder now, like the rest of us – more work for only the same (or sometimes even less) reward. It’s happening all over.  People find their ways to deal with it.

He has definitely found his.

If I think about this, I suppose the thing which hurts the most, is that he even tried to scam me.  And what hurts is not so much the attempted scam, but the thought he could get away with it without me noticing.

Now that is an insult to my intelligence.  He should have know better than that.

He knows I know.  He hasn’t tried it again.

But very often now, I see ‘my mentor’ trying to scam wide-eyed, eager newbies with his schemes.  To me, his tricks are blatantly obvious.  But others often don’t see through them (or the wiser ones choose to ignore them).  And the newbies hold him in high esteem.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to hold back and not ‘out’ him publicly for his methods.

For the newbies’ sake I should.

And my ‘broad hints’ are falling on deaf ears.

He knows I know what he is doing, but he thinks I won’t let on. 

Perhaps he is right…

But I am definitely pondering this whole dilemma probably a lot more than he thinks.  My only question is…

Do I really owe my mentor my silence?

No Sox related posts.

Something I really cannot stand is an idiot. 

By ‘idiot’ I do not (necessarily) mean someone with a low IQ (after all, IQ assessment relies on many factors which are relevant only to corresponding factors).  I mean someone who has no real understanding of a situation, or topic, but who insists, not only in loudly asserting their thoughts on the matter, but then ridiculing anyone who disagrees with them.

You will find the idiot (or usually a bunch of idiots) on every forum on the Internet.  In fact, there are many forums composed entirely of idiots.

From my own experience, the best way to deal with an idiot is to ignore him or her.  But sometimes that is a very difficult thing to do.

A good forum can be ruined by a bunch of idiots.  They bully other members into submission and those who refuse to submit are hounded and ridiculed, until they give up the fight and leave the forum.

The result is that the intelligent forum members move on, either out of choice or because they are hounded out.  Then the forum becomes an idiots’ playground, thus eventually leading to its own destruction.

I have left many a forum because of idiots.  Sometimes no one notices I have gone.  I have read the forum threads, watched the games being played, and moved on without comment.

At other times, I have become involved in forum arguments.  This is never a good thing.  The only ‘winner’ is the idiot.  But only in his eyes, because really there are no winners of an argument happening in hyperspace (unless it is something more sinister, but that is a whole other subject…).

All you are doing when you argue with an idiot online is wasting your precious time. 

You cannot reason with an idiot.  Idiots see things in black and white (if they bother to look at things at all).  Accepting no ’shades of grey’ means leaving no room for compromise and, in any case, to do so, in the idiot’s terms, would mean loss of face.

Why this post?

Well, I have just decided to give up entirely on another forum because of increasing  ‘idiot rule’, which is a shame, because this particular forum was once upon a time a treasure trove of friendly help and advice.  Nowadays, it is being rapidly taken over by bullying idiots.

Why bother wasting my time staying around to fight for something which isn’t mine anyhow?  It’s just a forum.

I guess as times get harder economically, many business forums will suffer the same fate.  People get frustrated.  Their tempers are short.  They bicker and fight.

It’s sad, but bickerng and bullying appear to be coming an increasingly evident part of life.

Sox Related posts:

1. Bullying Online When attacked by an online bully, do you STFU or...
2. Do Business Mentors Deserve Loyalty? Should You Protect A Scammer Who Has Helped You Succeed?...

Our relationship is kind of volatile.  We love each other one second and fight like bitches on heat the next.  But if you try to separate us, beware, we would both turn on you as one…because that’s what being sisters is all about

My sister began working in the adult biz around two years ago.  She’s a grafter and, unlike most ‘newbies’, she really made it work for her.  When I began making adult blogs, her help and backlinks were invaluable.

But she did one thing which really pisses me off.

Back last year, my sister decided to get some extra cheap hosting.  She didn’t care too much about the quality – it was to stick up a few crappy blogs and some static web pages.  Being the cheapskate she sometimes is, when offered a free domain name as part of the package, against all good advice she said yes.

She used the domain name ssoxx.eu (the dot com had been available right up until she made her purchase – strange that…).

Yes, that’s an extended version of my nickname.  But according to my sis, it’s not that simple.  She says she named it after her pet dog!

My sister lives in another country to me nowadays – a place where ‘perros abandonados’ roam the streets…and crazy English people take them in and adopt them.

When an ‘abandonada’ arrived, cold, wet and flea-ridden on my sister’s doorstep, she took it in, paid the extortionate vet’s bills to bring the perra back to health…and named it Sox!

Was there a bitchy message behind this?  Pure coincidence (the dog has contrasting white fur on its feet), or a token of her affection for her sis expressed through the name she gave her dog?

Definitely not the last one.  And even if it was a kind thought in her eyes, was she saying that mangy mutt reminded her of me?

A charming thought.  I think not!

By the way, the dog is really quite sweet.  It’s not her fault.

Long story short.  My sister makes a hasty decision on a ‘free’ domain name and her mind drags up the word ssoxx (obviously the original, shorter version had long gone).

To add insult to injury, a few months later, after sticking her crappy blogs on the domain, she asks me if I want it – hosting and all.

No, I think I’ll pass on that one.  Just get her to host a few things of mine there, and leave it at that – after all, fairs fair.  And I got my own instead

The moral of all this (if there is one):

• Don’t buy a domain name from your host – he could well snatch your dot com and leave you with a lesser choice (not saying they did, just pondering on that one a bit).
• Don’t expect your sister to be nice to you when choosing domain names in a rush.
• And expect the worse when your bitchy sister names her pet dog!

Oh yes, and ssoxx.eu (SSOXX Sex Files) has some really good stuff

No Sox related posts.

It’s taking me an age to get this blog up and running, and it’s all to do with finding a decent free WordPress theme.

Sure, I could buy myself a premium WordPress theme, but many of those are rubbish, made by theme hackers and copiers who really don’t have a clue what they are doing, and some of the free themes are much nicer anyway.

The problem with free WordPress themes is that more and more people are deciding to make WordPress blog themes just to get backlinks for their main sites, or at least to get traffic to them.

Now, I have nothing against leaving attribution links in the footer of a WordPress theme – after all, someone went to the trouble to make it and saved me a load of grief.  But I do object to the footer being filled with loads of spammy links which bear no relevance to my blog, or even to the theme itself.

There are some beautiful free WordPress themes out there which I would love to use (many are SEO friendly too, which is always a plus, as many aren’t), but so many of them contain at least three links to totally irrelevant websites.

For example, if I am making a ‘babe blog’, the last thing I want to be linking to is a garden centre site, but a couple of pretty themes I found do just that, even though the themes themselves are ‘pretty girl’ oriented.  WTF?

And then there are all the ‘make money’ hopefuls, who design, or modify loads of themes to be ‘SEO Friendly’…and then stick at least three links on the bottom to their ‘how to make money’ sites.  Yeah sure, I really want my cash-strapped readers going to your website and closing mine, in the misguided hope you are going to help them make a buck.

Even worse are the ‘SEO WordPress themes’  which insist on telling your readers that the theme is designed to rank high in the search engines’.  I’m sure Google et al would be really pleased to know that your blog doesn’t have its main intention as being interesting to your readers – it is all about getting to the top of the search engines.

And yes, I know that, in practice, that is where we all would like to be, but why be so damn blatant about it?

But despite all this, you finally find a good, workable free WordPress theme – a reasonable attribution links and it still looks nice and acts nice too… until you test it out and find that the sidebars slip all over the place, whatever you try with the CSS the fonts still don’t work properly, your images won’t align the way you want them to, and, for those hung up about widgets – not only is it not widgetized, but trying the ‘fix’ for this breaks the bloody theme!

And that’s the stage I am at this moment in time…

I really don’t mind not having widgets – I’ve learned enough by now not to need them.  But it would be nice to know for sure that any other little ‘fix’ I need to use along the line, doesn’t break the theme either.  Especially once I have done all the non-widgetized sidebar work.

Ok, rant over.

Perhaps next time I’ll post a ‘babe picture’.  I’m sure it’ll have a much more positive affect than this wall of words rant about free WordPress themes

Addition:

I was googling for ways to edit this theme and discovered this: Hidden Spam Links In Wordpress Themes

The guy is going on about ‘hidden links to gambling and porn’, and, as usual, linking porn to’bad neighbourhoods’ (it is, if it’s on your non-adult blog, like his, but not if it’s on an adult blog like mine). But that post was very helpful anyway, as it showed that his copy of the very theme I am using on this site (in case I change it later, it is the ‘I Feel Dirty’ theme) had some pretty nasty code inserted in the functions file and the footer.

As it turned out, the theme used on this blog – downloaded from the designer’s site, is clean. He had downloaded from one of those ‘free wordpress themes’ sites which display loads of different themes, and it appears the ‘nasty’ had been inserted in the code there. His description of how he found it is a very helpful read.

And, of course, validates my rant about the problems of using free wordpress themes.

No Sox related posts.

More, much more relevant Sox thoughts follow soon…I hope!

No Sox related posts.