Eureka! I Have Found It! The Worst Article Ever Written!

Eureka! I Have Found It! The Worst Article Ever Written!

Okay, I'm here to blow off some steam tonight. I need to do it; I'll feel better after I do it; I'll be glad I did it.

First, I make no claim as to being a great writer. However, I do endeavor to write with some modicum of passion and sincerity. Through the years I have tried to learn and practice good writing skills. Today I make 100% of my income from writing. My 12th grade high school English teacher would be shocked sober to learn that I do.

Two summers ago when I was in New York I bought a little booklet titled, Walking Tours of New York City. There was map and a tour that would take you by some of the hangouts of famous writers and I decided to go for it. I went to the White Horse Tavern where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death. I sat there for an hour nursing a cold one--taking notes. I felt inspired just to be there. I walked by Allen Ginsberg's mother's home where he wrote Kaddish. It made me think of the first time I read Ginsberg's Howl ("I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness")--a poem that made me cry real tears. It was vulgar and nasty, fueled by Benzedrine and LSD--but it also had a beauty that I respected.

These men, despite their foibles, were men of substance. They were extremely gifted writers. I respect that and I am frustrated knowing that I can never write with the lithe beauty and fluidity they commanded. It hurts me to know and understand my limitations.

One thing I write is articles. I do this to generate traffic and provide a little link juice to some of my pages--but I do it mainly to generate traffic. Tonight, I reached a milestone. I discovered what is, without question, the very worst article I have ever run across in my life. I won't name the directory I found it in, but it was not EZA.

The irony of the thing is that this article was promoting a piece of article spinning software. The links in the resource box pointed to the sales page for the product. I want to give you an excerpt of the article so you can realize the abhorrent terror that ran through my blood as I read it.

"The cape of article marketing is to win having the status of much exposure and credibility having the status of likely. The easiest way to organize this is by symbols tantalizing content and submitting it to having the status of many directories having the status of likely. xxxxxxxxx command help you generate thousands of backlinks with the aim of can deposit you up on behalf of a tremendous amount of exposure."

I am critiquing this article as is permissible under Title 17, U.S. code so don't rag on me about not having the author's permission to use this excerpt. And I am not providing the author's name because I sure the hell wouldn't want my name associated with a piece of head cheese like this.

This excerpt is the result of using article spinning software. I couldn't help but think of Dylan Thomas or Allen Ginsberg pondering for hours whether to use "that" or "which" in a line in their writing. Or spending hours to decide on whether they needed a semicolon or a dash in a particular line. And then I run across people who call themselves writers submitting rank and odius vomitum such as this article for public reading.

There may exist some article spinning software that works reasonably well out there. I am not familiar with any. But the real question is this: Who wins by spinning articles into this kind of hash? The article directory doesn't win. I will never go back to this one ever! The writer doesn't win: I will never read another article by this author. And the reader doesn't win--I didn't get a quality experience from reading this tripe and cow heel at all. Article spinning, in my opinion is a lose, lose, lose proposition.

And I have a word of warning to article directory owners. By letting this kind of trash permeate your directories, you risk losing readers--and publishers submitting their work to you. Remember Google's prime directive: To provide a quality experience for its users (searchers). I strongly suggest you make this your prime directive as well. When users of your article base become too frequently dissatisfied with the quality of the articles they find, they will look elsewhere.

I know many of you are very good article writers. I know many of you write all of your own articles and take great pride in them. My hat is off to you. I respect you and your body of work! But all of the monkey poo that is pouring into article directories these days hurts all of us. It gives us a bad name.

I had to get this off my chest.