Mood: Aggitated

Lately I've seen a ton of contests going on. Where I happen to hang around, most of these contests help you win a domain. Something I've noticed is that all of said contests rule on a "point system". This means that people have to earn "points" for doing certain things. The person with the most points wins.

That all seems easy enough right? Well yes, of course it does. But! Yes, there's always a 'but' isn't there? Before you can ever start earning points you need to follow the rules and requirements. Again, sounds easy enough.

Well, I hate to inform you, but both are a lot harder then they sound. Why? Simple, because from what I've seen these people who hold the contests on their websites want you to follow them here or there or do this and that here and there. Confused? I'll explain then.

A lot of people want you to follow them or their site on Twitter or Plurk. Most of us know what Twitter is – it's what everyone is talking about but my question is; what in the world is a "Plurk"? These people either offer you points for following them there or it's a requirement. Now, I have honestly never heard of Plurk and have little to no idea what it is. How can I follow or join a site I've never heard of?!

Of course, said people don't offer you a link to the site or even tell you what the site is or what it's about. Now I find this quite frustrating. I also think it makes the contest unfair. Why?

Think of it this way, you get 30 points for following this person on "Plurk". Well, you don't know what a "Plurk" is and if you're like me, you're not going to create an account someplace you'll never go to. But everyone else can earn those 30 points but you can't!

In all honesty, doesn't this sound like a way to lose points? Or, you simply can not join the contest because one of the requirements is to follow them on Plurk. Sounds pretty impossible if you (a) don't have a Plurk or (b) can't create one for whatever reason, or (c) don't wanna make an account, follow the person, then never use said account again.

The answer is, find out what "Plurk" is and create an account! Well, I have to say that this is wrong. I don't agree or support people who create accounts for sites, etc that they aren't going to use. What is said site requires a username? What if you use a username someone else in the future wants? Well, you don't use the account, but they can't have that username either because you have it – though you never use it.

I don't think that's fair. The contest is for these people's sites. They are holding the contests; the contests should stay within the contest holder and the contestants' sites. Not the contestant's site visitors (unless said contest is a referral contest), not a site like Plurk or Twitter. The contest has nothing to do with Plurk or Twitter so why is the contest venturing to these sites?

If you're going to hold a contest, keep it without your site and your contestants' sites. Don't make it venture all over the place to sites that have nothing at all to do with the site or its contest. Simply put, it isn't fair to anyone.

Mood: Aggitated

My friend has had this myself account for at least six years now. She’s always used anime pictures as her parents and her feared stalkers, etc. Recently though, she added real pictures of herself. The funny part about this is that before she couldn’t get messages or friends requests from anyone for anything under any circumstances. Now, she must get at least 12 friend requests a day and 5 to 6 messages as day. All of which are from different people.

My friend has never joined any of the useless ‘friend request trains’ or whatever. Especially not recently, yet she’s been getting friend requests and messages like there’s no tomorrow.

Her and I were talking about all the adds and messages and are starting to wonder, why the change? Why are guys in particular the ones sending the messages? Why are they the ones making the suddenly friend requests? She’s gotten literally one friend request and message from a girl. All the rest were from guys most of which were her age or older.

One of the said guys even asked her out to a sports game and he’s never even spoken to her once before! They don’t know each other at all. We doubt he even knows her name. She of course politely turned the guy down, but it was ridiculous. They all wanna know what she likes, where she lives (and it says on her profile), what she’s into. They’re asking all these questions.

I couldn’t help but laugh when she said she changed her status on her profile from ‘single and looking’ to ‘single and uninterested’. She’s hoping that will help but somehow we doubt it will. My friend isn’t a fan of all the attention. I can see why though. None of these people were interested in her before they saw a real picture and now they are.

Now, I do admit that my friend who will remain nameless is really pretty. No, I’m not just saying that because she’s my friend. I mean seriously, though, she is pretty. Neither of us could doubt this as an option. Since after all, all the requests and messages came right after she added the pictures. She hardly made any changes to her profile and the changes she did make were merely spelling and grammar errors. We ruled this out as a possible reason.

So she and I have found this funny. Is it the fact that men flock to pretty, skinny girls like there’s no tomorrow or is there some other reason that we have missed completely?