I Found A Blog Plug On Several Communities On Christmas Morning

Moral dilemma. You found someone who is plugging their blog on several forums. Repeatedly. Never participates in any discussion. What do you do: mute the user, block them, just ignore what they are doing, or report the user to the mods? Here's my story.

Christmas Day, about half an hour into my morning browsing, I noticed a blog plug abandoned on several Google+ communities. As I approached the blog plug, rather as if it were a fart trapped in a wicker chair, I considered my next move.

In my annoyance at seeing this blog plug again I failed to take a picture, so here’s a stock photo of a blog

Option one: ignore it. Conclusion: unsure.

Option two: report it to a mod. Conclusion: no, because:

a) it was Christmas Day so even if there was anyone moderating the community they would either be dealing with drunks (relatives) or enjoying a swig themselves, and hardly likely to be interested in an annoying blog plug complaint.

b) even if there was a diligent moderator willing to take the complaint it would almost certainly end up in the air, or more likely, given the issue, not be addressed, because nobody was likely to take action on something that's merely annoying.

Option three: block the user. Conclusion: tempting. But given that blocking someone on Google+ isn't as straight forward as it sounds, no. Or at least not yet.

Option four: let generosity win. Conclusion: this was the best answer.

There’s a little charity I know called Taking The High Road. They take all things annoying and somehow make them less annoying.

Letting this idea rattle around in my head for a while, I had an ever so little back and forth with myself.  "Are you willing to let this one go?" I asked myself.  “Yes” I replied without conviction. There could, after all, have been another blog plugger somewhere else in the vicinity, but, given my relaxed mood, I decided that this was probably not the time to enter into a discussion to establish without doubt that there wouldn't be another blog plugger nearby, and I didn’t much care either, so I just said “yes”.

“Is this going to keep on annoying you?” I asked myself in a somewhat accusatory tone.

“No, I will try to not have it do so.”

“Are you not going to report it to a moderator?”

“Not sure yet, since I'm not sure the mods will be interested in it.”

"Well," I said to myself, “if you're sure this won't continue to annoy you, I'll leave it up to you.”

“It’ll be a nice Christmas present for someone in desperate need of a larger blog audience,” I trolled with a big smile. “Season of good-will and all that, eh?”

Sorry, couldn't help it. It's not meant to be malicious, just funny in a passive aggressive way.