#482

It's kind of weird to put words into this text field. I don't only mean that it's a weird thing for a weird person to do, which is true and the whole reason I do it. Nor blogging itself, that's not weird; running this type of blog, not monetized, not designed to angle for the lead in a brutal algorithmic world-race, one which openly critiques its host and its platform and the very environment in which they are set--that is weird. Weird, and indeed, pointless. 

Also it is weird--still not the main weirdness!--because who reads it? No one, basically. And I know this because it is functionally impossible to find. In fact, searching for my blog, rendered on a Google service, using the Google search engine on another person's computing device gave me no results, and the more specific and correct I made my query, the results grew sparser and lesss coherent until I gave the mechanism no choice but to show my blog, and it showed nothing instead. To be fair, it said that it "seems as though few web pages match your search". 

And that's weird too, right? First of all, I am not looking for a bunch of websites like the one I am looking for--I am fucking looking for a specific website, one which I was extremely clear about seeking. Also, even if few websites matched my search, you would think they would want you to see it, since some things are usually more desirable than no things, and being told that there 

• are some things, but
• I won't actually show them to you

is not only weird, but actively needling, perhaps even infuriating. Since...why? Because it is their own engine looking for their own website hosted on their own service, I damn well know they know what I'm asking about even if they're not making money from it. But steering people away from shit they can see for free seems weird, even if I can understand why you would prefer that people look at ads. So are you saying they can't--that people should not look at free content on your service, or that my writing is so objectionable that you need to bury it where no right-thinking person could even look for it where I would think to tell them to?

Guess another reason I can think they might want to bury my blog is that it is excellent food for their large language models, a vast and varied collection of word arrangements, and they wish to camouflage my uniqueness as their own as effectively as possible. But when I criticize AI, and their approach to AI, they flag the post, and never unflag it, despite my humble entreaty. So, is this the clammy hand of a shadowban?

Why flag what you won't let anyone see? That's some...I dunno. That's really something to digest.

No--at last--I mean it's weird because it's a stupid and exposing thing to do. Trying to say real shit about the world and your opinions and ideas about it could seriously get you killed out here. In this sense, perhaps my overlords and masters at Alphabet are doing me a kind of favor.

Well, guess all that is the cost of doing business. I am compelled to do it, and the fact that it might be seen as dangerous must mean that it's not useless, even if it's pointless.

Or they fucking broke their own service. Who can say.

--JL