Not only has this heap of grievances failed to deter DecorMyEyes, but as Ms. Rodriguez’s all-too-cursory Google search demonstrated, the company can show up in the most coveted place on the Internet’s most powerful site.

Which means the owner of DecorMyEyes might be more than just a combustible bully with a mean streak and a potty mouth. He might also be a pioneer of a new brand of anti-salesmanship — utterly noxious retail — that is facilitated by the quirks and shortcomings of Internet commerce and that tramples long-cherished traditions of customer service, like deference and charm.

Nice? No.

Profitable?

“Very,” says Vitaly Borker, the founder and owner of DecorMyEyes, during the first of several surprisingly unguarded conversations.

Threaten your customers with physical violence and you can get to the top of the natural search results. Your google ranking is based on a lot of things, but attitude or opinion is not one of them. Using machines to determine 'sentiment' is a significant artificial intelligence challenge and likely one that will not be fully solved in the near term. I do think its likely that machine learning will soon get good enough at it to have some statistically relevant value over large amounts of data.