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PhiNotPi's avatar

I believe I have found one source of the "follow me on tumblr" questions! Will you help me stop them?

Asked by PhiNotPi (12686points) December 27th, 2011

Look here. It is an ehow article that directly tells people to come here to ask those “will you follow me on tumblr” questions, promising results in the hundreds of followers. Look at step number three. I plan on fixing this, but I want to leave it for now so that you could see it.

I believe we should start an initiative to get rid of the places that send people looking for tumblr followers here.

Will you assist me in finding other places that send people here to ask those questions?

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35 Answers

TexasDude's avatar

What are we going to do, send them cease and desist letters?

The best thing to do is flag these stupid questions any time you see them so the mod team can get rid of them. I kind of have my doubts that there are many websites out there, other than the one you linked to, that encourage people to spam tumblr questions on Fluther by name.

PhiNotPi's avatar

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Ahh, well, back to square one. I thought I was on to something for a while, but now the excitement of discovery has died down, and I am stuck thinking “now what?”

PhiNotPi's avatar

How do I delete a question?

augustlan's avatar

I don’t know how much good it will do, but I just posted a comment as Fluther on that article:

“As the Community Manager at Fluther.com, I just wanted to make you all aware that we don’t actually allow “Follow my Tumblr” posts on our site.”

PhiNotPi's avatar

@augustlan Thanks. GA (stands for Great Action).

augustlan's avatar

@PhiNotPi Thanks for tracking it down for us!

CWOTUS's avatar

Damn. Were you trying to find followers for your Tumblr?

dappled_leaves's avatar

That is so obnoxious! Well spotted – I hope they take it down.

AnonymousWoman's avatar

@CWOTUS The OP might not have been. I remember reading advice on a site that advised people to come on Q&A sites and ask strangers if they’re attractive or not to find out if they’re really unattractive. It even went as far as to advise people to pretend that they were the opposite sex and post a picture of themselves with a friend. On and on it went. It also hahaha advised them to pretend they were interested in both people in the photo and ask which one was better looking. It’s similar, but not the same. Both encourage attention seeking with ulterior motives. Personally, I find the whole thing funny. The things people do for attention… just to get followers… or boost their ego… or whatever. I agree with @Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard, but I think @augustlan‘s response is acceptable as well.

PhiNotPi's avatar

@CWOTUS I don’t have a tumblr account.

Actually yes, I was part of my evil plan.
1) Join a random, relatively abscure Q&A site
2) Spend months trying to seem innocent, while letting people become familiar with me
3) Open an account in that site, tumblr
4) Modify my tumblr account to direct spammers to Fluther
5) Make people really annoyed
6) Reveal that I have found the source of the problem
7) Someow convince that following the problematic page will somehow fix the problem
8) Sacrifice my Fluther account to improve my tumblr one

But seriously, I don’t have a tumblr account.

XOIIO's avatar

Fucking assholes, If I got my hands on whoever wrote that article….

PhiNotPi's avatar

I found more:
here
here
here
here

These are all reposts of the same info, so look at step 3.

augustlan's avatar

Thanks, PNP. I’ve done what I can at each site (except the Russian one.)

AnonymousWoman's avatar

Russian translators, anyone? ;)

PhiNotPi's avatar

@augustlan Thanks, I honestly didn’t expect you to do anything with that Russian site. I guess my new nickname is PNP. GA again.

Dog's avatar

AWESOME AUGGIE!

Just as an additional kick in the rump, I contacted eHow at support@ehow.zendesk.com

“As a Fluther.com moderator we have been inundated with spammers due to item #3 on this eHow article: http://www.ehow.com/how_6051415_followers-tumblr.html

Please remove our link. We do NOT allow solicitations for followers on Tumblr or any other cause.”

It is my hope that the other content farms will pick up the corrected version automatically once eHow corrects it.

Awesome find @PhiNotPi!

PhiNotPi's avatar

Thanks, @Dog. GA.

Lightlyseared's avatar

What makes me laugh is that “post interesting stuff” is the last sugestion on the list. I mean god forbid people wanting to follow your blog because you have something worthwhile reading on there.

AnonymousWoman's avatar

^^ Maybe the person who wrote the article wanted to save the best advice for last. :)

Lightlyseared's avatar

@AnonymousGirl you know that sort of good natured optimistic out look to life is going to end up causing you no end of heartbreak ;)

AnonymousWoman's avatar

A sense of humour can help repair heartbreak. I do hear that laughter is the best medicine. :)

PhiNotPi's avatar

@AnonymousGirl Laughing actually causes some epidemics. Weird as it is, I’m serious, that actually happened.

AnonymousWoman's avatar

I’ll check that link out.

PhiNotPi's avatar

There is also a dancing plague of 1518 that killed several people.

AnonymousWoman's avatar

O_O

Okay, now you’re scaring me…

PhiNotPi's avatar

I’m going to stop, because I’m getting a little bit freaked out too.

augustlan's avatar

@Dog Well done! Now why didn’t I think of that? :)

KateTheGreat's avatar

I’ll take care of the Russian site whenever I get to my home computer, if it hasn’t been taken care of already.

Lightlyseared's avatar

@KateTheGreat that sounds somewhat ominous.

Dog's avatar

@Lightlyseared Yeah- is that not totally freaking cool? We have our own Jelly Ruskie connection!

@KateTheGreat If you need some backup I can bring out the pig.~

SpatzieLover's avatar

2 weeks later…I just found this thread & see eHow hasn’t responded to the removal of Fluther.com from their instructions. If it were me, I’d send a certified letter.

CWOTUS's avatar

How about certified email?

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