Who would want to be labeled as: misleading, cajoling, bullying, stretching the truth and being undeniably shady?

No one in their right mind, which must not have described former ESPN freelancer, Sarah Phillips, who was terminated Tuesday after Deadspin identified her as the ringleader of a scheme that allegedly conned popular web producers out of rights to their content.

You can read the account published by Yahoo! Sports blogger Chris Chase.

No, I don’t have to remind anyone that being called “undeniably shady” isn’t good for one’s professional image. I thought this article was worth pointing you to because it can be a caution against the lure of quick gain.

Phillips aggressively accumulated the Twitter followers of others as part of her plan to build an artificially inflated following from which she hoped to benefit professionally. In the process, she tricked unwary individuals who signed over their accounts and associated followers on Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook in exchange for a stake in a non-existent sports comedy venture. They were hoping for quick monetary gain, she was banking on quick social media fame. All involved lost.

I’ve been well-served by this chestnut of advice that remains as true in the Intranet Age as it did in the Garden of Eden: “Something that seems too good to be true, probably is neither.”

Anyone who has seen an episode of “Hoarders” on the Arts and Entertainment channel (A&E) can understand why I wouldn’t want to be considered one, myself.

The people depicted on that cable television series typically are forced to come to grips with the reality that their continual and obsessive acquisition of…stuff…has made their lives unmanageable. The images are disturbing: Men and women of all ages and backgrounds shuffling among piles of material “goods” either purchased, scavaged or accepted over the years as being too valuable to lose.

But in the acqusition of things, these people lose their lives.

[Insert audible sob here] And now I realize that I am ONE OF THEM!

No, my house isn’t cluttered by mountains of overflowing Hefty bags filled with clothes and other items. It…it’s…my computers. In fact, it’s every computer I touch that can link me to my web-based email providers. Yes, I am a hoarder of…emails! [Insert wail of self-disgust here].

I’ve finally hit bottom, and I’m ready to ask for help.

I’ll need the help because, like the people featured on Hoarders, I have a lot to clean out. We’ll have to start with my main personal email account, commakazi2@yahoo.com. As this screen capture shows, I have more than 27,700 emails in my inbox–nearly 23,000 of which have never been read!

       My Yahoo! email account is out of control!

Just as in the cable show, I can give you many excuses why I haven’t disposed of those emails–some of which go back to the early 1990s. “I’ll get to that email tomorrow.” “I’ll need that one someday.” “Oh, that has good information in it.” “If Yahoo! didn’t want me to have this many emails, they would limit my mailbox size.”

It is so easy to justify avoiding the delete button. But now I realize that I have been in email denial, and it is overwhelming me!

The signs of unmanageability are too large to ignore. The questions from colleagues why I haven’t returned their urgent emails–which are buried among the solicitations for fitness clubs, pharmaceutical offers and just about anything imaginable from Ragan Communications. The feeling of helplessness when my SPAM folder is actually more enticing than my inbox, because it contains far less content to review. The way my hands shake as I type in my email login and password “just one more time” and expect the inbox to be empty of new mail.

There you have it. I’ve come clean.

Except for that stash of 8,000 emails that I have hidden in my Comcast email account, and the growing pile in the gmail account, and the hundreds in my work email account.

HELP!!!

I happened to see on Yahoo! that today is World Press Freedom Day.

According to Yahoo!:

Bloggers are included in the list of journalists being celebrated on the Yahoo! site, including:

• Wael Abbas - Egypt–Blogger and human rights activist who blogs at Misr Digital
• Amira Al Hussaini - Bahrain–Journalist, editor, and blogger
• Yoani Sánchez - Cuba–Philologist and blogger known for her critical portrayal of life under the Cuban government

I thought it was interesting and slightly amusing that Wael Abbas was the first journalist listed by Yahoo! under the heading, “Celebrating Journalists.” Yahoo! had shut down two of his Yahoo! email accounts, calling him a “spammer.”

To all of my friends in journalism, today is your day. Write on!

A few times in recent weeks, I’ve been unable to watch video news items promoted on Yahoo!. I click the link to watch…

…and get a “not available” message:

Has anyone else had this experience? Is the video source pulling the videos because of a surge in traffic, is this a conspiracy to make Yahoo! look bad, or something else?