On Constant Comments and Swooper Attacks

Bloggers are the nicest people!

Really folks, I think I have met some of the nicest people in the world in this little place we call Blogville.  Take Susan at My Place To Yours, for example. Even though I had become a Nogger during the Christmas season, she still remembered that Christmas Eve was my birthday and sent me an unexpected birthday card.

And then, there's Kitty. Many of you know Kitty from Kitty's Kozy Kitchen. She's not only one of the best recipe sources in Pinville,  but she's just a generally nice person.  I got a little treat in the mail from Kitty this week.

It came about because I felt the need to leave her a comment (surprise, surprise) about the name of a tea in one of her posts.

This one.

I told her that it should be the official tea of Debbie Land.

She LOL-ed me.

Then, she sent me a little gift of gab in the mail for good measure. 

Thank you, Kitty!

She also sent along some eggnog tea.  It will have to be egg nogger tea for now, though, because this morning, I would kind of like to yak about that constant comment business.

I plead guilty.

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but I'm what you call a constant commenter.   I'm uncomfortable with silent spaces and generally feel the need to fill them with a little commentary.  According to the Man of the Place,  I have never had an unexpressed thought in my entire life.

That's not true. You wouldn't believe some of the thinks I think. 

But then again, maybe you would. 

The truth is, while I joke about my motor mouth, I actually do work at keeping a grip on it.  Even more than the quantity of words, though,  I try to work on the quality of them, especially in that constant comment business around here.

As in,

If you can't leave a nice comment, don't leave one at all.  

Let's face it. Unkind or unnecessary written comments don't  just slip out accidentally. There's no such thing as a slip of the finger, people.  Written comments have to go through a filtering system. They have to go from head to hands to keyboard. Then, when it's all been said, they still remain unexpressed until we willingly send them.

And there's always that delete option that could be deployed...

The truth of the matter is that most if not all of the unnecessary comments in Blogville don't come from our blog friends and neighbors, do they?  They come from the Swoopers.  You know the kind I mean. You've never seen them before,  but suddenly... there they are, swooping in to leave an unnecessary negative.  I'm not talking about blogs of potential controversy, either.  It happens just as often on regular old yakabouts.

I got swooped one time for yakking about Sunday dinner with my family.

What?

Another time, I got swooped for cutting down a Christmas tree.  

The post wasn't even about cutting down a tree; it was just about decorating it. I merely mentioned that we get a live tree in the body of the post. Suddenly, I was swooped.  I have no clue who this woman was. I clicked her name, but I had never heard of her blog.  I think it's pretty safe to yak her out since she's never been back here. She showed up on that post, though, swooping in to tell me that there was never a reason to cut down a tree.

I think she might have used a few of these  !!! for good measure, too.

Never mind that Christmas trees are actually a row crop. Nope. Plant them, folks, but under no circumstances should they be cut down.

!!!

I guess she doesn't eat corn, either?  (Probably not. You know, genetically modified corn and all... And don't even get her started on the carbon footprint left by a herd of belching bovine...)

But I digress.

It isn't really the specifics of the matter, anyway. It's the principle of the thing. What's more, it's the pure mystery of it. How do these people find you?  Do they sit in basements somewhere googling for key words? Do they receive some sort of swooper alert?

 Some folks blame the anonymity of the cyber world.  It gives cowards boldness they never had before, they say. I think I agree with that.  I also think it's probably just a sign of the times.  We live in a culture that seems to lack common courtesy in every other area. Why should our words be any different?  Fight picking and insult hurling is all the rage these days.

In the end, the only fingers I can control are my own.  For my blog friends, neighbors, and fellow partiers out there, I'll try to use them as positively as I possibly can. I would rather be a Kitty or a Susan  than a swooper any old day of the week.

And  as for those swoopers? I'll continue to use my fingers on them, too... by hitting that button that says delete. 

And that's all I have to say about that. 

Have you ever been the victim of a swooper attack? 

Do you leave them, respond to them, or delete?

And in contrast, what was the nicest thing anyone ever did for you in Blog Land?