The Ugly Side of Karma
Karma is neither good nor bad. Like air, it just is. And, like sour pickles, some people like it and some people don’t. ( for the record, topsurf does not like sour pickles ) Karma is also like the weather and food. Absolutely everybody talks about it, absolutely all the time. BigBoss has noticed that food thing big time. So it would be unfair to give people a bad time about Karma-envy.
I understand that there are Karma spam-bombers everywhere. They’re actually quite easy to notice. They Plurk constantly. They rarely respond outside their own threads. Their Plurk-to-Response ratio ( Plurks / Responses ) is often very near one, rather than the nice 10 to 1 or more in favor of response that characterizes the good conversational Plurker.
The spam-bombers are also obvious by the number of relatively meaningless questions they ask. Things like “Pepsi or Coke?” and “Mac or PC?” There’s a million of them. All they want is lots of responses, so that their Karma goes up. They are the white noise of Plurk. Or maybe the dark noise. They jam up the timeline and they chew up the resources that could be used for meaningful plurking. They can be the bane of Plurk when it’s busy.
Fortunately, they are pretty easy to eliminate from your timeline. You would not see their Plurks if you weren’t following them, so stop following them. Either select the “do not follow” option from the friends panel, or de-friend them altogether. If we all do that, the only people they will be spam-bombing is themselves.
I’m KDFrawg on Plurk. Feel free to say “Hi!”




June 16th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
A great quick read my friend. There is a horrid trend as of late on plurk i must admit. I mean how are we supposed to plurk par tay with all that blah
peace man
June 16th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Hola Mike, Great advice. Have had nothing but good experiences in my first week of plurking. Glad to be there/here… and nice to know you too! ~P
June 16th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Gah. Totally agree. Good read sir, good read
June 16th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
It seems like I have to deal with a couple of spammers each day. It is fantastic that my core group of people has stayed the same, and that it continues to slowly grow. Plurkers are the absolute best!
KDFrawg (the Plurkiverse dewd)
June 16th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
I’ve noticed this and it’s a bit sad. All for a silly number that doesn’t even mean anything! I understand why people obsess over Karma– it’s a method of social comparison which people are hard-wired to do. But still, the number itself becomes meaningless because it’s not a good indicator of a “quality plurker.” In fact, you can bet that the people with the most Karma are the bombers, who are not quality plurkers at all.
June 16th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
@calinazaret -
I have been meaning to go to the pages of the top few Plurkers and see what they have been Plurking. I just have not had the heart as of yet. But I will.
KDFrawg (the Plurkiverse dewd)
June 16th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Nicely said Mr. Frawggie! I do have to admit though, some of the questions today have sparked some interesting conversation.
I like it when THAT happens!
June 16th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
If only that follow/not follow feature worked for me…
June 17th, 2008 at 12:01 am
i think the new Karma algo has reversed the trend a little bit, things seem to be shifting around on the top plurkers list.
i know it’s like food & the weather, in that people just have to talk about it, but when the karma update rolls through and 25 people either crow about it or complain, and that’s when i find it gets a little … much. i’d rather have discussions take place here, rather than numerous times a day over on Plurk.
June 17th, 2008 at 1:32 am
A good concise read… thanks dudey.