It's Steve (now in blog form)

This morning I posted something silly on Please Wash Hands about exploding poop.  Within a couple of minutes we were getting followed by PoopPal on Twitter.  That’s the danger of automated search and follow.  Sure I mentioned poop repeatedly, but I wasn’t looking for assistance.  Failure to consider sentiment makes this type of behavior annoying rather than effective.

It’s interesting that the abuse is starting to kick in on Twitter.  Quantcast has them at 6 million monthly uniques.  That seems to be the inflection point for abuse on social sites.  I hope they can sort it out before things get really out of hand.

Update: PoopPal is less automated than I thought.  His response to my post:

@stevepearman I agree there is a lot of questionable practices going around, but I am not interested in your money, just your poop

Well said, sir.  I stand corrected.

The web is full of rabbit holes and this is one of the weirder ones I’ve come across in a while.  Here’s the process.  Try it at home!

1) Go google.com
2) Type in “Why is” but don’t hit the search button.  This will generate a set of suggested searches based on popularity of searching on google. This is where things get crazy.  The third most popular search term is “Why is my poop green”.  Seriously.  Here’s a screen shot.

3) So I had to check out what sort of magnificence waited behind the “why is my poop green” search. 

4) PoopReport.com?!?! Your one stop source for stories of unbelievable poops and, something new to me, “poop terrorism”. Behold the glory of their logo.

Thank you google for broadening horizons.