There were something like 54 comments to my blog in the last couple of months which I  stored and ignored because I am a paranoid blogger who has heard far too many horror stories. There are the obvious selling spams, most of which have variations on this (url deleted to protect the innocent) : “This is a comment to the » Hereunder admin. Your website is missing out on at least 300 visitors per day. Our traffic system will dramatically increase your traffic to your site:url deleted – We offer 500 free targeted visitors during our free trial period and we offer up to 30,000 targeted visitors per month. Hope this helps 🙂 Unsubscribe here: url deleted “so that’s a no-brainer. I would not even click on the unsubscribe button, in case some ghastly virus clambers onto my hard disk. Open nothing is my rule.

I get dozens of these every month.

But then there are the slightly more believable ones. Like this:

“Hello ,

I saw your tweet about animals and thought I will check your website. I like it! I love pets. I have two beautiful thai cats called Tammy(female) and Yommo(male). Yommo is 1 year older than Tommy. He acts like a bigger brother for her. 🙂 I have even created an Instagram account for them ( url deleted) and probably soon they will have more followers than me (kinda funny).

I have subscribed to your newsletter. 🙂

Keep up the good work on your blog.

Regards
Wiki”

So sweet! The only puzzle is, I have never blogged about animals. Not ever. There isn’t a cute kitten to be seen on a single one of my articles.

But what about this one: “Wonderful article! We will be linking to this particularly great article on our site. Keep up the great writing.
contoh transkrip inlay mahasiswa” Ok, seems harmless. Good name! Quite nice even. But it doesn’t specify which article, or what it is about my writing that appeals – so it just looks like a mass-produced comment sent to a huge number of blogs to get a response using their url, which could so easily be dangerous.

This one though: “I seriously love yoour website.. Excellent colors & theme. Did you build this site yourself? Pleasze reply back as I’m hoping to crwate my very own website and want to know where you got this from or just what the theme is named. Cheers!
beasiswa pascasarjana” Another great name! It seems so sincere and yet…I’m sure if I reply I’ll just get sold at. Can you see the dilemma a nice liberal conscientious blogger like me can get into?

It gets even harder with something like this: “I saw your tweets and thought I will check your website. Have to say it looks very good!
I’m also interested in this topic and have recently started my journey as young entrepreneur.” Well that’s a great heart-tugging start. After all I have spent most of my working life helping young would-be entrepreneurs as a teacher. So ya got me interested kid. But then it goes on: “I’m also looking for the ways on how to promote my website. I have tried AdSense and Facebok Ads, however it is getting very expensive. Was thinking about starting using analytics. Do you recommend it?” and ends with a suggestion to put his url on my website in exchange for mine being on his. Well the flaw is, to my mind, I blog about the world and writing; he has not revealed what he blogs about or is selling. Want to bet it’s some sort of software? Or something else he thinks I may buy? He has made no direct comments about my stories or poems, or politics, or philosophy or anything I actually write about.

Why am I so low on trust? I always think many people on the web who post comments on my blog are either trying to sell me something or cheat me in some way? Except, of course, for YOU.

YOU actually read my posts. YOU don’t want my money, just my ideas or insights; YOU may well want to argue with me, even throw stones at me. YOU may be delighted by my stories or inspired by my poems. Or not. YOU may love my books. Or not. YOU may agree with my politics – or maybe you love Trump, are loving the Brexit process, perhaps you really enjoy polluting the planet. But I doubt it! Because I think YOU are probably lovely.

YOU are so welcome to comment! But if you want your comments published, please show you have actually read what you are commenting on. If you do I promise to answer you.

With love!