Miscellaneous, etc.

For those of you in the audience who are web writers, web loggers, web journallers or whatever, you are likely well acquainted with the fragile balance involved in offering a place for your audience to comment. On the one hand, as an (aspiring or otherwise) writer, you crave the (preferably adoring) feedback of your readers; on the other, you will inevitably suffer the deranged ramblings of internet weirdos, who think that because you are sharing your space for comment, you have entitled them to a soapbox from which they can screech their insane noise.

This risk has been around since people were brave enough to post their e-mail addresses on the internet, giving others the chance to write in with twenty-five pages on their favorite color, how annoying it was that the mall was busy today, or how much your website sucks. Irritating, possibly, but certainly no less of a danger than anything to which you’d expose yourself on public transit. People blather, and the more they think they like you, the more you’re going to have to save your internal monologue for when you’re in the bathroom.

Nobody ever tries to sell you porn, though.

At least, nobody ever tries to sell me porn. Maybe I ride on the wrong bus, I don’t know. But when you’re sitting there on your way to the mall or work or whatever, it’s one thing to have someone turn to you and comment about the weather, and entirely another to have them look over at you and say:

“Hi, My name is Amanda Lorence, I found your site on Webcrawler.com. I live in Canada, British Columbia. You’ve got an awesome site. Very well designed, with lot’s of good links and important info. Have you been looking for hot quality Transsexuals photos and movies? See them all here. We have movies, stories, interactive chat, and a whole lot more… Ever wonder what it would be like to sleep with a hot Shemale Tranny? Or get a killer blowjob from a chick while she jerks herself off? You just might after looking through the photos movies and personnel ads here.”

Like I said, maybe if I took the bus more often then I’d get this kind of thing, but somehow I doubt it. But on the internet, that’s what’s popping up all over the place.

Wondering why I’ve been gone since November? I’ve been cleaning out my fucking comments section. For every teenager who’s using my Pirates of the Caribbean review to tell the world that, after close observation, they think (ellipses mine) “johnny depp is sooooooo…oooooo…ooooooooo…oooooooo…ooooooooo…oooooooooooooooooooooo..ooooooolush and very fit” — and there are a whole lot of them — there are about five times as many pornographers, casino gamblers and genital organ enlargers who are praising me for my web design. Every couple of days, I’ll be flooded by notices of comments on this thing, only to find that it’s someone from giant@yourcockwillsoonbe.com telling me that I’m “really good html.”

My comments have been violated.

Trolls I could handle, because they have a genuine interest in attracting attention. They want me to fight with them, argue with them, validate their existence. They tell me that I suck cock because they want me to articulate several reasons why I don’t, so that they have the opportunity to rejoin with exactly why I do — it’s a ritual that is acted out day after day all over the internet, a subtle interplay between those desperate for attention and those who are too stubborn to drop a stupid conversation. And most importantly of all, they are truly earnest in their shallow, irritating behaviour. They know they’re being annoying dicks, you know they’re being annoying dicks, and so do all the players at home. It’s all part of the game.

Above: A mysterious brownie settles like a sigh on the soft earth, coaxing the unexpected towards her with her magical, mysterious song: “Hi, My name is Amanda Lorence, I found your site on Webcrawler.com. I live in Canada, British Columbia. Have you been looking for hot quality Transsexuals photos and movies?”

But this is almost the exact opposite of a troll: A person whose comments are meant to be innocuous at the very worst, or bizarre segues from flattery to killer blowjobs from a chicks while they jerks themselves off. An elf, maybe? A spam elf? An anal trans-sexual porn-advertising spirit of the forest? A brownie?

Brownies don’t want us to know who they are. They want to blend in among everyone else, offering insights about site layout and brilliant writing, while they put links to animal farm porno sites or online casinos. They attack in swarms, blinding you with temporary delusions of popularity, leaving you weakened and disoriented while they bloat your archives with spam. They arrive without warning, jam you without mercy, leave without adieu. They have no conscience, show no remorse. They violently fuck your comments section and leave it sobbing in the bathroom.

And they do so apparently without reason. Do pornographers and bookies really have so much faith in the online journalling and weblogging communities that they’re projecting winning some huge business this way? Are they such adorable optimists that they really think this is the way to win more traffic?

Lolita Goat Porn Webmaster #1: Hey Eddie, we topped out at 25 million hits in 2003. That’s only an increase of 35% over last year!
Lolita Goat Porn Webmaster #2: The dream is over, Amanda. I might as well just go shut down the servers right now.
Amanda: Wait… what if… stay with me… what if we’re just not reaching our target audience? What if we need some new kind of marketing scheme?
Eddie: What are you talking about? I’ve already scrawled our web address on the inside door of every bathroom stall in the mall! How much market penetration are you expecting?
Amanda: I know, I know, but we’re fighting for our lives, here. Do you realize that we’ve only moved eighty gigs of that killer chick giving blowjobs while she jerks herself off?
Eddie: God damn it, you’re right. There are fewer people than ever wondering what it would be like to sleep with a hot shemale. It… it just makes me so angry inside, Amanda.
Amanda: It’ll be okay, Eddie, and you know why? Because we’re going to tap into the last great untouched reserve of depraved perverts in the world.
Eddie: Canadians?
Amanda: Webloggers! Can you think of anyone who needs a hardcore blowjob from a hot tranny more than, say, James Lileks?
Eddie: It’s just so crazy that it might work!

I’m not an internet marketing genius or anything — even though I’m good html, I’m the first to admit that I’m no expert at winning traffic. But I will say that pinning your hopes on innocent, unsuspecting blog readers is at best a low-percentage play. I cannot imagine that many people unintentially opening up a page full of hardcore trans-sexual porn and being drawn into its mysteries, despite the argument that Amanda Lorence of Canada, British Columbia makes.

And so I’m left wondering exactly what the point of this activity is. The only logical remaining thought is that somehow all of this sneaky linking is somehow helping these sites on their search engine rankings, but I’m at a loss to figure how. Is it so easy to raise your relative ranking against other sites simply by making the internet lousy with your link, regardless of context? Is it really worth the investment of time and effort that it must be taking to do this (with what I assume is an automated bot)? Are there really that many people out there waiting to find out what it would be like to sleep with a hot she-male?

And if that’s the case, you have to wonder how many others are out there waiting to read about some guy complaining about porn spam. Not that there are many, I’m sure.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some comments sections to visit.