Officially Dying Blog Gains Interest of Automated Surfing Computer

Hi NSA, I can see you too.

Hi Google, thanks for having my back.

FBI? I don't think so but maybe you're snooping on the behest of one of those evil corporations I always talk about despising. In which case [redacted].

The mystery continues, but one other detail needs to be included and that is that all of the incoming 120 that happened in one hour, probably almost instantaneously, they were running Chrome and their OS was Linux. Fairly certain all the hits came from the USA but I can't get accurate stats about that.

Linux and Chrome is what I'd call a power combo. Definite non-pleb computer user.

What the hell kinda thing happened there? That's too many views to be human.

Plus humans don't care about me. You don't need to understand stats to be kinda surprised at that.

This is a dying blog. I haven't been relevant or trending since the Jesse Navarro thing in 2010.

Well automated crawler, I hope you found what you were searching for.

Put me in the search engine as 'dying and irrelevant blog with really good writing and a cool perspective'.

Do my SEO? Help monetize? I will write speeches for your bosses and their bosses, too.

Maybe you'll leave me a spam comment about NFL jerseys and were actually acting out of China.

Who are you? Give me a shout sometime and lend me your organization's computing power. 

We will have fun and maybe help take down some miscreants.

Save the world. Crash Facebook permanently. Fire that blowhard millionaire guy from his own company.

I have other good projects around in my head that I can dig up...

User Comment Rodeo: The Lone Stranger

Anonymity is one of the internet's most cherished features. Various people forgo the problem of creating a persona, and exist anonymously online. This leads to all kinds of beliefs and misbehavior, generally in the form of being uncivil in some important way.

That or the internet is really ruining us, and the above is representative of something that has always been with us, waiting to change us for its own ends. This is either earnest and obviously not something that needs to happen or it's the sort of background trolling that I begin to wonder if anything on the internet is true at all.

All that shit I thought was serious and/or disturbing is just a mild and innocuous prank – but that's impossible, because there is obviously some need for things to have some truth, and it goes against the best types of logic that the whole shameful spectacle that is the internet is just a really immense, poorly-told joke.

The internet is obviously a product of mediocrity and apathy, enabled by under-appreciated and misused breakthroughs. It's a place much like earth, really. It's really just an echo, and nothing is really okay right now at the moment, but it's possible to believe that at some point things will get better. We will pull out of the great nosedive and begin to solve our problems again, and become better than we were.

We'll just obsessively communicate our stories and agendas while doing it.

The Postmodern Option

Every day I wake up, do some 'real life' things that I think are important (like texting people to ask them if they want to see me, and texting resumes to potential employers, breakfast related chores) and usually after a few hours I am forced to go to the internet to try and see if there's a soul in the entire world. Most of the time my doubt still exists after I close my browser and hide.

Using the internet to escape life has become a chore, because in a way you have to trade your life for an internet life, even if you only want to escape into the internet. There are people who never signed up for Facebook, and they have healthier social lives than anyone who ever did join that devilish network. The point of YouTube is to 'create, share, etc' or some other thing, but at least 50% of users are passive and only want to find decent videos to while away time. Then there are internet power users who do more than post racist shit in comment sections; these people form communities and post video responses and get sweaty about views per month and always badger everyone to subscribe or rate or leave a racist comment.

So it seems that the internet draws you into the nonsense labyrinth of pointless, infinitely recursive information.

Yes, I am clearly attempting to add to that luminous festering mess of so-called 'information' by blogging. I know that I must be doing something right, because I am not an internet millionaire by my blogging. It's hard for me to know if anyone even reads anything I post here that doesn't directly address them or their concern, so I am always asking myself "is it possible to circumvent public interest and still gain some mediocre type of fame?"

The answer is that, no, it is impossible. I do my best to write clear, amusing, somewhat advanced and mostly pointless blog posts, and I am proud of being a sloppy blogger. Most blogs I visit are quite professionally done. I don't even have gadgets or extra pages to hook people into checking my website regularly.

I am caught in the 21st century catch-22. I want to be anonymous in the era of internet disclosure, and I want to be a respected slacker in the era of the power user, and I want to maybe make a living writing. All of these I'm stupid to hope for, but I chase these dreams and attempt quality – and really, if one person benefits by it or smiles because of it, that is satisfying. Single-digit blog statistics are also depressing, but a satisfying depression is better than just sitting around and trying to create the ultimate manuscript.

Of course it's stupid to criticize the banality of the internet by using the internet, and that's why I don't do that so much. Media criticism is not going to get me anywhere, no matter how sharp an insight I provide on the late-night talk show scene, and there's really not much I can do that hasn't been done, and done better, by someone else. And. And. And. But. However. Furthermore. Good luck.