If you’re like me, you’ve probably noticed a growing trend on these blogwebs.  No, I’m not talking about the alarming number of bloggers speculating if Jerry Yang still has the Yin to keep Yahoo in the Yen, or the astounding number of posts about the color of Jay-Z’s next album (mauve).  What I mean is something far, far more sinister.  What am I talking about, oh gentle reader? LINK BAITING.

Yes, Link Baiting, which is

a disgusting monster propagated by the scum of the blogging world

: SEO marketers.  The most sinister practice known to bloggers and readers alike, in which lazy bloggers try and backpack on the natural flow of information around The Network in order to profit on someone elses hard work.  Now, I’m not saying that blogging about Twitter every time the website is down is a sin, the conversation must go on, and laws of attraction will show that what people eventually want are reviews of the things that interest them.  However, these tactics are just price solutions yielding small change to bloggers, while readers face an Olympic mass of information to sort through.

And it’s not the little guys who are guilty here, they have to do everything they can to keep up- because the big guys (cough, arrington, cough) are so busy trying to make and break every grover norquist, dorothy hamill, geo duck, and renae shrider that comes into the world, trying to stir things up and blow them out of proportion so that they can turn a profit, that it’s all the little guys can do to keep up.

This has to be stopped, and TechFaux has set out to do it. So, right now we are offering all link baiters a four day weekend retreat to help them get clean:  come to New York (via Frontier Airlines) and fix up your act!  Put down your keyboards- you can heal your life wild tigers.  You don’t have to be addicted to the hits.  It’s not all about who’s the strongest tagging strike force out here. Come Clean. Hang out! We’ll cruise around the city in our new Zip Car, watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, various former Hollywood stars sex tapes and/or the Glaad Awards on the TF Google Media Server, and just plain kick back, not worry about if the next iPhone App is going to support a secret password protected folder in which to hide your porn (so your wife/girlfriend/child/mother can’t find it when they want to test out your phone and really, what were the odds they would have?).

You don’t have to be part of the problem anymore, you don’t have to be like them.  We can get off the junk that is the 2.0 bubble hype and just have some good old-fashioned blogging fun. Make it about content, not comments. Together we shall overcome.

The Search for Jerry Yang continues, and no one can give us any new information as to his where abouts.

“I don’t get it,” said one associate, “I’ve checked twitter, I’ve been on AIM, I’ve even tried sending him a txt, but he just isn’t responding! Something must have spooked him and he just ran off. We’re all very worried he may be trapped, or wounded, or worse!  We’d go to the cops, but we fear they’d probably put him in a cage and run tests on him…”

Meanwhile the authorities aren’t having much luck either. Said Silicon Valley Chief of Police, Rick Erickson:

“We’ve been laying traps laced with multi-billion dollar buy-outs including equity all over this damn town and we just can’t seem to catch him!”

Jerry, if you’re reading this, please, just please come home. We don’t want to hurt you.

Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), often pet named Enron of the Internet, has been accused of many things in the past few months:  striking deals with the devil, playing corporate suicide, endangering the welfare of these tubes, antisemitism, illegally downloading indie rock music, and being responsible for the death of beloved American actress Anna Nicole Smith, but nobody in the blogosphere was quite ready for today’s announcement.

Jerry Yang, founder or whatever and former CEO of Yahoo had this to say today on his personal livejournal:

“When reviewing the unsolicited bid from Microsoft, I had the chance to sit down with Steve Ballmer and candidly address the facts.  It wasn’t so much that their [Microsoft's] hostile bid was too cheap or devalued our brand…And it wasn’t that I was trying to kill Yahoo either..What it ended up being was about humor.  LOL if you will…That is to say, I single-handedly rejected Microsoft’s proposal for billions more than our current market worth…for the lulz.”

Techmeme is shaking at the foundation over this story, so I suggest you go check it out.

This just in from the WebCo Cafateria:

TechFaux has it from a super duper inside source at Microsoft’s house that Google’s brothers best friends college roommate’s summer fling heard from Yahoo’s sisters boyfriend that Yahoo’s Mom said that she didn’t want Yahoo playing with those baddie Microsoft kids anymore.

Said Microsoft in response to this startling revelation:

Yahoo is a stupid, smelly, poppy-head who is afraid of her own shadow.  If I saw Yahoo right now I would punch her right out of her stockings, and steal the lunch money she dosen’t have because nobody loves her and she is a big dummy.

After making this statement Microsoft was immediately sent to the corner for a ten-minute time out to think about what she said.

Meanwhile, Google, who has never gotten along with Microsoft or Yahoo, made what analysts are calling a very mature gesture of friendship to the crying Yahoo, offering it some pudding and making faces at Microsoft for the rest of the day.

In related news, Facebook and MySpace both had to miss recess today.  Analysts estimate they will continue to sit out from the coveted playtime until the can learn how to share.