There is one thing they never tell you when you're thinking of starting a site like this.

They never tell you about the weird and wonderful world of the Nuisance.

Nuisances come basically in three varieties – the Hacker, the Spam and the Troll.

Hackers I can deal with.  I keep track of them and word must have spread about my little minefields, traps and machine gun defences because they pretty much leave me alone these days.  I can understand why they do it.  Presumably they want to take control of elements of the site so they can install software to further their nefarious businesses.

Spam is a slightly different matter.  Again, I can understand why they do it – once again to advertise their nefarious businesses.  It doesn't really bother me as I have erected razor wire electrified fences around the site and the vast majority don't get in [apparently I have killed 52,979 spam comments already and they are just the ones who got impaled on the fences].  A few still get through, and they are the ones who cause me some annoyance because they take up a lot of space.

Spammers seem to have some kind of template where they select wording for their little messages.  This is fine and dandy, but there are some lazy fuckers out there who just mail the entire fucking template, which really does piss me off.  It's a bit like someone dumping all their household waste over my fence instead of just the odd beer can.

Then there are the Trolls.  This bunch I fail completely to understand.  They seem to get their kicks out of just sending mindless, sometimes abusive and sometimes threatening comments.  Why?  What do they get out of it? 

I can sort of understand schoolkids sending abusive messages to each other – that's just electronic bullying and kids can be nasty little cunts, but I fail to grasp what anyone would get out of posting an abusive message here.  They can't physically see my reaction when I see their work so they don't know whether I laugh or cry, though in fact I do neither – I just bin them without a second thought.  They might raise the odd sigh, but that's all.  I can only assume that they are very lonely individuals with an incredible lack of self esteem, who are very lonely within themselves and just want to try bringing others to their level.

So there you have it.

There is the main pipeline running down the road carrying fresh unadulterated water [this is a metaphor and nothing to do with my experiences of Irish Water], and beside it runs the sewer carrying all the shit they never tell you about.