Swimming in a Sea of Sleaze
The one thing that you have in this life is your character. You can't buy it, you either have ethics and morals or you don't. And I'm not talking about your sexual behavior, I've never understood how that got into the discussion in the first place. I'm talking about how you treat other people, do you deal with them fairly and honestly or do you lie, cheat, and steal?
The reason I'm going off on this rant is twofold. I recently read a popular guide to Internet marketing, and the guy writing it is a total slimeball. He freely admits to being involved in every sleazy aspect of the Internet. Online gambling? All over it. Get rich quick schemes? He's got that covered. Offshore pharmacies? He's your man. Dude, moneys great, and it really sucks when you don't have any. Been there done that. But it's not the be-all and end-all of existence. If you can pay your rent, utilities, buy food, and have a couple of bucks left over to go out on a date, go see a movie, or go to a nice restaurant, you're doing better than 99% of the other people on Earth who live in mud huts and have no health care, food, or running water. (And maybe have a hot girlfriend NSFW). I guess this guy just has more needs than I do. But am I going to admire or look up to him? No. I'm going to think he's a useless piece of crap. I just don't need money that badly.
The other thing that set me off is checking out a popular affiliate program. I'd heard about it, so I said WTH? I went to the web site, clicked around, and saw what they had. The "Internet products" consisted of spyware and rootkits. Oh, I'm sorry, spyware removal tools and registry cleaners. Yeah, right. If you need spyware removal, there's AdAware. And there is very little need for registry cleaners, which have a high likelihood of really screwing up your system. I personally dont want to reinstall Windoze and lose all my crap. I guess if you're really anal and want to use one, use CCleaner, it's pretty good and like AdAware it's free. I'm just not going to install spyware or a rootkit on some poor bastards system to make a nickel. If I ever get to the point where I need money that badly I'd rather panhandle.
I think the Internet is the greatest series of tubes ever created. I really want to get to the point where I'm making a lot of money providing useful information to people. But Im not going to push gambling or pr0n, or infect people with spyware and god only knows what, to make a few bucks. I'm sure there's a special place in hell for those people, and I don't want to end up in jail.