Pottery Attack and the Interpests

Pottery Attack! My Favorites today!

Beautiful Nudibranch Bowl from lesperancetile I love sea slugs and this is an absolutely beautiful transfer from a scientific illustration.

Wonderful raincatcher from laspottery. Spring is springing, and this is a great way to celebrate the return of warmth and weather sanity in the garden!

Crafted by adventuresinclay, it looks like an Arabian Night's airship to me, ready to take off at any moment.

in·ter·pest

–noun, plural -s.

1. Any person, thing, activity that presents a nuisance while on the internet.

• Faux galleries on etsy. You see a conversation header that perkily says "I love your work." You instantly think "Oh a commission maybe!" You open the conversation and see a wall of text containing things like "I am honored pleased to welcome you two or galleri opens." I always get my hopes dashed...
• Faux friends on Facebook. They had a name resembling the name of a well known ceramic artist so I cheerfully said 'yes' when I got the invite. This person spammed me with "My cow in farmville makes chocolate milk" "could you care for my pigs while I am away?" "I am a big don in Mafia Wars."
• I innocently found a great shop on etsy and 'favorited' something. Later on, I noticed the shop had 'favorited' me, warm fuzzies all round. The next day, a friend of that shop contacted me, asking that I favorite them. Only problem is, they specialize in adult items and I didn't want everyone in my activity list to see it. Sorta felt sad that I had to self censor just to satisfy the activity thing, they seemed nice.
• I noticed that I had a ton of new subs on Twitter. All of them were from the clones and sock puppets of one account trying to sell me holistic dog food (why?). Or, a few weeks ago it was mineral cosmetics, and before that it was lotion that would shrink my pores and make me look 10 years younger. It's nice to see that spam bots have moved up from viagra.
• Conversations that randomly ask for a discount without any preamble or even previous business dealings. I do my best not to feel insulted, but what I always feel is "Your work is not worth X to me, but it is worth Y, which, coincidentally, is equal to what I have in my penny jar." Art is a luxury, not a right. I would never refuse someone a hot meal, but I will withhold porcelain miniatures!

These are amalgamation and slight exaggerations of actual things that happened while selling online. I do have to say that 99% of my interactions are positive and that I love my shop regulars very very much. It's just when you get a few of these greatest hits, you have to write them down because they're either funny, mind boggling or just so annoying!