Robot Overlords! I Welcome Your Comments!

Surely the most common source of melancholy among bloggers is the sense that, no matter how much salacious personal information or incisive commentary you roll out, no one is reading. There is good reason for this sense; statistics tell us that many blogs struggle along with only a couple dozen readers.

No need to despair. Your blog, along with this one and all the others, is being read faithfully and carefully, just not by human beings. Your words are being devoured by millions of unthinking web-crawling algorithms. As Jaron Lanier wrote in the preface to You Are Not a Gadget, in the twenty-first century "words will mostly be read by nonpersons…they will be copied millions of times by algorithms designed to send an advertisement to some person somewhere."

Case in point: I wrote my first blog post a couple weeks ago, and waited eagerly for comments. (Because, like the digital meth-addicts we have all become, my moment-to-moment sense of self-worth depends on how many "likes" my latest status receives, how much clever banter is generated by my witty comment on someone else's.) Sadly, the post earned a grand total of three comments. The first was a supportive and on topic, submitted by someone I know to be an actual human being: namely, my Aunt Ann, a writer who lives in Virginia and loves cats.

The second comment might have been written by a human being, but was clearly posted automatically, in the manner of spam email:

"I love your transitions and clarity. I have been writing for Ghost Writers for a while now, and they pay me well to write blog posts like this, or articles. I clear $100-$200 on a awful day.

Judging by your skill with the english language, you may enjoy doing the same. It wouldnt hurt to check them out.Here are the details"

This could not reek more of scam if it were signed by a Nigerian prince. Indeed, the link leads to a site for a "Work From Home" business, confusingly illustrated by a woman in a business suit and black heels.

The third comment to my post was the most intriguing:

"Sfvpwqlx says:Jesus' unity with God is established by the Incarnation as the divine Logos assumes a human nature. , general contractors in albuquerque nm, [url="http://lm1.generalready.com/general-contractors-in-albuquerque-nm.html"]general contractors in albuquerque nm[/url],http://lm1.generalready.com/general-contractors-in-albuquerque-nm.htmlgeneral contractors in albuquerque nm, bat,"

I have read this post many times, and followed the link to the bizzarre chock-a-block website, and still cannot grasp out the connection between "Jesus' unity with God," "the divine  Logos," and "general contractors in albuquerque, nm."

It's got to be spam, right? Sent automatically, by a machine…but what the hell does it mean?

At least with that second comment, I know what the digital web-crawling robot wants: it wants me to go to the website with the business-suit lady and shell out whatever rip-off up-front fee I'm supposed to shell out, so I can make "$100 – $200" a day working at home. (Similarly, the single comment on my second blog entry, which just says "This is a wonderful blog. I love it", redirects to a bootleg movie site.)

But this "comment" from Sfvpwqlx is another thing entirely. This particular digital robot wants something from me: maybe to worship Jesus, maybe to move to New Mexico and become a general contractor, maybe something else entirely. Or maybe the machines just want us confused and disoriented, so when the great robot revolution comes we'll put up less of a fuss.

In the meantime, my friends at Quirk — publishers of my books Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Android Karenina, and real human beings  as far as I can tell — are running a very clever "Art of the Mash-Up" competition with Bridgeman Art. Go ahead and enter — Mr. Sfvpwqlx, I look forward to seeing what you come up with.