Oh I’m one of the special ones to get spammed. I got an email today targeted at bloggers from ammado about themselves and World Refugee Day and the UNCHR and taking a picture of me or someone else with my hands over me head in a pose to protect refugees and posting it on their site - not even my own site!?

Now I have a thing (or twenty) about human rights so contacting me might have been a good idea – pitching to me about a forthcoming event or campaign and saying have a look at this and we’d welcome your comments. Starting the email with Dear Suzy/Maman Poulet would have been even better!!

Oxfam and others have asked bloggers before about different campaigns – they’ve done it with a bit of nouse and understanding about how to pitch to bloggers. Even the Green Party knows about bloggers and getting a list together and asking if you’d be interested and then not patronising the hell out of you when doing so with ‘charidee/marketing’ speak. I bet if I tried to join this outfit they’d have me inviting all my friends to join too and spamming them in a ‘poking facebook’ kind of way.

ammado (with a small a - groan) – I hadn’t heard about them until today’s email – so I headed off to the website to find out more - and here’s the spiel…

‘the global online community of people who care. Providing a free interactive and unique environment, ammado connects nonprofits and engaged individuals to achieve their vision.’

It stinks of Chuggers on the net. Not buzzing in the blogosphere. Well the Irish blogosphere is certainly buzzing about the spam and the way in which the pitch was made.

If the UNCHR had emailed me themselves and said have a look at this I might have been along for a gander - if it were a news story even better - if you had picked one Irish blogger and asked them to blog about it and spread the word ye might of even got somewhere. There are loads of people in the Irish online communities who have advice on approaching bloggers and creating communities. I doubt they’d give ammado a hand now and the hands over the head thing well that’s crap. And ammado don’t want us to blog about the issues - they want us to go to their site and join up and build their community (aka target audience to tap for a few quid every month)

Now on the asylum seekers and refugees thing - when are we going to get angry about the trafficking of young people into Ireland who go missing and are not protected by the Irish State? Putting my hands over my head and taking a photo of myself won’t get them out of prostitution or slave labour - asking questions and getting angry and asking the HSE and Irish government and UNHCR to do something about it might. You see ammado, (aka Amadán to me for ever more) that’s what bloggers do well.