When Ryan Tomayko's blog was linked recently on Digg, he was so freaked out by the experience he wrote some code to reject all Digg traffic:
The funny thing about Digg is that it changes the way people read. The average Digger seems to assume that people write stuff solely for the purpose of making it to the Digg front page. ...
No one knows you there so you have to write in a way that is completely void of who you are and what you're about. That sucks. I'd rather just opt out of the popularity contest (and I did -- see below).
I've been ground into chuck a few times by high-traffic sites, most recently over my legal fight to save Wargames.Com from being grabbed by MGM.
When an online community's focused on you, it feels like a big deal, but the average Internet user can afford to spend no more than 10 minutes caring about any subject. After that, a new "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" remix, Apple gadget, or high-resolution picture of a celebrity's babymaker has hit the web and everybody moves on. Digg users form six strongly held opinions an hour.
When I offered BenedictXVI.Com to the Vatican, this weblog received 500,000 hits in two days and I got several thousand comments along with six flattering sexual assessments (five straight, one gay). I was just starting to enjoy my newfound celebrity after 36 hours when some Canadian woman fell on the ice singing the National Anthem at a hockey game in Quebec, inhaling all my fame oxygen. I was so upset I couldn't start my day with the Today Show for weeks.
By the time Tomayko finished his Digg blocker, the members of the site had forgotten him entirely.