10 Of The Biggest Online Mistakes Ever

Tip: Avoid these mistakes:

Lying About Their Traffic

One of the more humorous parts of Internet forums is how many people lie. Webmaster forums are a perfect example of that. It is just funny how many people go around claiming they run sites that get hundreds of thousands of hits each day, yet they never seem to post their URL.

What are they afraid of?

They are afraid of being exposed, that is all. Lying on the Internet is 10 times worse than lying in the real world - everything you say online can be found no matter how hard you work to erase it from history. Everything you do online leaves a paper trail.

Calling Less-Experienced People “Newbies”

Lately I’ve been getting in quite a few arguments with supposedly “good” SEOs on forums and IM sessions. Usually it goes along the lines of someone asks for some help, I post my thoughts, then some “expert” who claims they run several 1 million visitors/day sites goes on and says something along the lines of “Oh your such a newbie you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

O Rly? Why don’t those “experts” have constructive debates instead of going around calling people “newbies” for no reason at all. I’ll tell you why, they are idiots (and chances are, they are also liars, see #1).

True professionals don’t go around calling people “newbies”, they teach and talk.

Claiming They Are Professional When They Aren’t

Doing something as a career or having a college degree in the field doesn’t make you a professional. What makes you an expert is your experience. Someone who has been practicing for years will always be more experienced than someone who just got into the field. Don’t go around calling yourself a professional unless you truly are, it is as simple as that.

A few months back some dude asked me to help with a program he was writing. I told him to send over the source code so I could fix a bug, but he went on about how he was a professional and didn’t need to send me the code because I should somehow “magically” know what is causing the bug (don’t ask, his logic was severely flawed). Eventually I got him to send over the code, I fixed them bug, then two days later he said he became a professional programmer because his program was working.

My response was simply “Would you let a new doctor who claims they are a professional because they got a single ingrown nail-removal procedure done do work on your brain? I think not.”

What Is Their Username?!?!

I don’t know what some people are smoking, but they have got to toss that junk out. Usernames like “freecelephonesdotcom1″ and “freepornofmyselfandme4″ are not cool, they make you look incredibly shady, and they make you look like an idiot.

Yooo Man, Wazzzuppp!!!!

Not a big fan of people who call me “Yooo Man!!!!”. My name is Jeremy, not “Yooo Man!!!!”. It is even worse when they go all “Wazzzuuuuppppppppp?!?!?!?!” during chat also. That’ll earn ya a 1-way ticket to the ignore-users list. “hey, sup?” works, but “Wazzzzzuuuuppppp!!!” is just disgusting.

You’re A Professional Photographer But Those Are Your “Best” Photos???

It’s funny how many professional photographers have crap photos a 2-year-old could do on their web site. If they actually make money doing photography, then I could become a millionaire doing that stuff.

Guess I Won’t Join Your Site!

A few days ago some blog directory spammed me about 7 times with an e-mail. Yeah, that isn’t the best way to get someone to stay with or join your service, is it?

You’re A Professional Programmer Who Can’t Show Me Your Work?

One reason I prefer working on closed-source projects alone is because of some rather unfortunate experiences I’ve had in the past while asking people for help. For example, a while back I asked someone who claimed they were a programmer for some example work, just so I knew what they could do before he joined in my project. He “couldn’t” show me any work due to a “computer glitch.” What an “unfortunate” time to have a “computer glitch”, eh pal?

As you can probably guess (but I’ll say it anyway), he wasn’t hired.

Wait, You Run Google’s Servers?

This is a really funny one. Some guy IMed me around midnight and wanted to talk with me about server administration, he claimed he worked for Google and did a lot of their server maintenance. Now, that made me think he was a liar from the get-go, but I still went along with it just for a good laugh.

About 5 minutes later he asked me what the best webserver is, because he hadn’t ever set one up before. He wasn’t even a good professional liar.

Posting Nude Pictures

Ahh, the classic “post a nude picture” type of mistake. As you probably know, a lot of fools on MySpace do that. All it takes in 3 minutes to find some ridiculous topless picture of a prostitute on there.

It is even worse when someone makes a username like “hotchick102″ on a geek forum and has a picture of Pam Anderson as their avatar.

It’s just stupid, but I guess it works or else they wouldn’t do it. But really, who the heck are the idiots clicking on their links? I wouldn’t click them from a mile away, would probably get some disease or something.

Please subscribe, or else I will cry. Do you really want to make a programmer cry?