As a blogger and longtime user of computers and the internet, I have enjoyed countless hours while surfing or researching information. It’s generally a great place to be and a great place to meet lots of like-minded people.

But as you know, the internet has it’s drawbacks. Some are minor annoyances that are simply ignored and accepted as part of the overall background clutter, while others cause you to frown, and even piss you off.

Here is my list of annoyances and things we all could certainly do without during our online lifetimes. They are in no particular order of importance;

• Spammers – Whether delivered by email, social media or blog post comments, this is a constant annoyance.The internet would be unbearable were it not for spam filtering tools. Blog comment spammers are the kings and queens of spam with their machine gun like blasting of ads all over the internet.

Unfortunately, this is one of those things that will be around as long as the internet exists, so while it is a definite annoyance, life goes on.

• Copycats – Those who masquerade as bloggers but are really copiers who want something for nothing out of life. The mentality of thinking it is okay to steal other people’s content says a lot about a person.

I wrote an article a while back about Copycats and why they will never make it as bloggers which you can read here.

Copycats are really not blogging in the first place when you think about it.

• Scammers – People who willfully misrepresent themselves and/or their products to rip you off for your money. This problem is so huge that it causes everyone on the internet to suspect every other person until proven otherwise. This should not be the case, but you cannot blame anyone from being overly cautious when it comes to making purchases or giving up your credit card information.

The Federal Trade Commission has finally decided to go after these criminals more aggressively, but it will be a long waged battle. Your best defense remains education. Know what you are getting into; perform some due diligence before you buy.

• Twitter Blasters – This is what I call the fast and furious late night ads on Twitter, sometimes rolling by at near continuous speed. Twitter has become an automatic spam dispenser for some.

• Overuse of emoticons – Emoticons are great for conveying non-verbal feelings, but they shouldn’t tansform your content into a comic strip. Hey, get your word count up and just write out what you are feeling.

• Extreme profanity – This is where some sensitivity needs to be exercised, as our children may/will come across these written expressions at some point in time. Now don’t get me wrong, I am no saint and can be as salty as anyone on the net but this should be given some careful thought. A few hells and damns sprinkled in here and there can add some color to your content, but the F-bombs should be lobbed with extreme caution, the exception being adult rated sites of course.

• Dead-enders – Profiles found on social networking sites that have a link to a blog which leads to a site that hasn’t been updated in weeks, sometimes months. What could they be thinking?

• Prize winning emails – Man, if I had collected on all of the prizes and money I have won over the years, I’d really be sitting pretty about now. I’m talking millions of dollars and merchandise. Enough laptops to fill a decent mall size store, even automobiles. I must really be the luckiest guy on the face of the earth without realizing it. All of the winnings, without ever having entered a contest! Imagine that.

• Chain letters – Okay, read the damn sappy thing and send it to X number of people so that you can receive good luck. This is really some sort of social engineering tool to keep email traffic going.

Still waiting on that luck aren’t you?

• Breaking news stories – It seems every major news agency has “Breaking News”. Okay, but all the time and for every story? The term is so overused that it has lost it’s desired effect in most cases. The breakup of a Hollywood couple could surely wait on the print media.

• Loud and Flashy banner ads – The ads with the extremely bright, eye-hurting colors and all of the flashing lights, besides serving as one huge distraction from your content, really annoy the hell out of me. Cannot click the mouse button fast enough when this happens.

• The software update that’s not needed – Occasionally, I’ll get a pop-up from a software program (HP comes to mind) that announces that new updates are available. The choices are “update now” and “remind me later”.

Depending upon what I am doing at the time, I will eventually choose the update now button. The software goes out and returns to tell me that no update is required, as I am using the latest version. So why the heck did they tell me about the update in the first place?

Hey HP, get a grip will you?

• The software update that’s not wanted – Have you ever updated a version of software, only to be sorry that you ever did?

I remember a music download manager update that totally screwed up my ability to get music from their site. I had to go into their archives and find the old version, which remains in place today. Never had that with iTunes.

• The long kiss goodbye – after a long day (and half the night) online your eyes have become heavy and you are hardly being productive, so the time has come to shut down and call it off.

If you’re an old Windows user like me and remember the days when Win 98 and later XP would sometimes hang-up on shutdown, you want to be sure that it does in fact put away all of the files and software as designed.

This can be one of the longest waits on the planet, under those sleepy-eyed circumstances.

There is also the Windows update that installs during the shutdown process that can also be quite long-winded, although you have to ask for that one and probably deserve to suffer through your choice.

I could go on and on with these, but to do so would be to risk leaving the impression that I don’t like it online. Make no mistake, I love it. There is no greater place to learn and connect with people, while being in the comfort of your home. Communicating and sharing with people across the globe is a really cool thing to do.

as far as annoyances, everything in life has some level of them, it’s a part of the deal. For the most part we just continue with what we really set out to accomplish. But these can be fun to talk about on occasion, because so many people go through the same things. It’s a means of sharing and connecting.

What have you to add to this list of online annoyances?

Some no doubt, (and you know who you are) will be annoyed that I wrote this list in the first place.