After seeing that so many were letting their egos run amuck, I had to fix my SelfGrowth.com profile.   

I realized that hundreds of people who didn’t know me, were asking me to add them as an expert.  I had no idea who these people were but their self-aggrandizing bios were loud and clear.  How could I, in good conscience, add “** Tommy Lee - Awesome Expert!”?

The internet is a magnifying glass of who you are and how you handle yourself.  Do you want to be a victim or celebrate life?  Are you trying to change your life or simply entertain yourself with a little surfing?  Are you grasping for a quick buck or really delivering value to others? 

I came across one article which said something to the effect of:

The way to make money online is to write an article for your blog.  The title should be just sexy enough to get readers to your website but the article just bad enough to to keep them from actually staying to see more.  Ergo their only option is to click on your ad link and make you money. 

Bonus if the blog is ugly and visually uninteresting, which makes the ad the only thing worth looking at.

I was more than a little offended.  My time is precious and I want to spend it reading articles of value and quality.  No one ever said that writing was the way to untold riches in this country.  Ask any ‘real’ author; most of them aren’t living the high life. 

Jonathan Fields of Awake@theWheel is so bombarded by people who want his help to, in essence, scam his own readers that he wrote this article.  The following is an example of the lengths folks will go to enroll his assistance.

Hello Jonathan Fields,

I came across your site while browsing the articles at [site I've never heard of].com. You’ve got a terrific website and I especially like your article “[article I never wrote]”

My name is [person I don't know] and our firm [company I've never heard of] developed and distributes a product called [product I've never heard of]. It’s the only product of its type [meaning, there's likely no market for it]… supplying [silly generic benefit].

…To see the [now annoyingly unwanted product] sales page: [website I don't want to visit]

The internet is also full of people who are unintentionally  scamming others – readers, the pay-per-click ad companies, and the person doing the actual advertising.  Someone I  peripherally know set up a blog with AdSense and then kept clicking his own ads to make money!

And yet, I cannot abandon the internet.  We are living in a digital world and I am a digital girl.

Much of my mental life is online; I keep in touch with old friends, have made some fabulous new friends, and completely manage my finances electronically.  The things that I am interested in the ‘real world’ – living fabulously – are the things that I am interested in online.

Many people think of the internet as a ‘fantasy world’, one that is a far-away magical place of unfettered mental freedom. 

And, in some respects, it is.  But, never forget, what you do – be it online or IRL - is who you are.  Just because you can’t touch a pay-per-click ad, doesn’t mean that you can’t abuse it.

You are what you do.  Period.