I’ll just start this post by saying that my only tie to Darren Rowse is that I occasionally post a comment on ProBlogger and Twitip.  We’ve never conversed and he doesn’t know me from Adam.  He’s a big boy and he’s been around so I’m sure he doesn’t need Tumblemoose to be his knight in shining armor.

With that said, as I was reading and commenting on blogs over the weekend I came across two separate blogs that had posts telling bloggers that if they wanted to increase their stats, then one of the best ways to do it is by targeting a negative post at Darren.  Yes that’s right.  They didn’t say, “Go after the biggies.” or, “Choose a high profile blogger.”  No, they specifically encouraged folks to post something negative at Darren in order to rile him up and drive traffic to their blog.

That stinks.

I’m not going to point a link to those dregs because I don’t want to support or encourage that kind of behavior.

Now, understand I’m not saying that Darren or anyone else is above criticism.  If you feel you honestly have a beef with ProBlogger or any other blogging site then I say start a conversation, get feedback, see if others feel the same.   But, it needs to be in the spirit of resolution and it needs to be sincere and heartfelt.  If you  toss your barbed hook in the water just to see what you can “troll” in then I’ve not much use for you and I think it speaks to your character.

Without getting too new-agey here, I’ll say that when you participate in these kinds of antics you devalue yourself and it will come back to bite you.  Sure, maybe you’ll drive up your numbers a bit for a period of time but the long term outlook for you and your site will be bleak.  As it should be.  It’s the equivelent of taking the lazy shortcut instead of doing an honest days work.  Even if you “get away with it” how good could you possibly feel about yourself?

For me, the tortise wins the race.  I’ll take the high road, thank-you-very-much.  I’ll get to where I’m going and I’ll feel pretty good when I get there.

So, my question is:  How about you?  Have you done this type of thing before?  Do you feel this is a legitimate path to build your base?  Have you participated in these kind of antics and how did you feel afterwards?

Am I missing something?  Do I need to open an account at Backbones R Us?