Can I Interest You in Buying some Prime Swampland on Mars?

I was reading Craig Wortman’s the Art of Sales MOOC group on LinkedIn. It is based on his exceptional Coursera program which I recommend in the highest possible terms.

“If you are interested in buying or Investing in Prime Swampland on Mars, click here,”

There are about 2,000 of us in this group.

In and among the helpful and insightful comments, the requests for help, and the legitimate confusion, there was a posting saying something like “If you are interested in buying or Investing in Prime Swamp Land on Mars, click here,” though it didn’t mention either swampland or Mars. While the earlier deletion (swampland)  may have made it more interesting, the latter deletion (on Mars) of course made it much less so.

This wasn’t a paid ad. I tolerate those. Linkedin provides a valuable service and I don’t begrudge them making their billions by renting my eyeballs.

It was an individual (or a bot pretending to be an individual) system cheat!

What might I do? What can I do? What should I do?

What should I do?

It’s a real question. Do I and 2,000 others individually block him? Do I ask the moderator to ban him? Do I report him to LinkedIn central?

One of him is annoying. In bulk people like him destroy an entire ecosystem.

I don’t know what to do.

Perhaps I should give his name to James Veitch?

Or maybe I’ll just write a blog post and hope that inspires someone to do something.

Perhaps that someone will be you !?

Feel the pressure.

Feel the guilt.

Earn yourself gratitude and a baby animal picture.

Actually, I’ll send out my gratitude and a baby animal picture right now. That way you can feel extra guilt if you don’t solve it for me.

Yes, today’s gratitude and a baby animal picture go out to everyone who is working on solving this class of problem. It definitely counts as #suckagereduction.

And if you act before midnight tonight…..