Yesterday, blogging pal Elke wrote in protest against another uncalled for ‘improvement’ to our blogging and reading experience, courtesy of WordPress. That particular one hasn’t hit me yet, but another annoyance has, which I guess isn’t precisely WP’s fault. I’m now getting a dozen or more new followers a day. Allegedly. They virtually all have gmail accounts, and not one of them has ever ‘liked’ or commented on any of my posts, so I guess these individuals are utterly unaware they have subscribed to my blog. But I just thought you might like to know that as of this morning, I apparently have another new follower. None other than Elon Musk….
Hahaha
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He gets everywhere. I don’t want him in MY house.
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He hasn’t followed mine, which is reassuring.
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…. yet.
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Lucky or what? I’m keeping my head down xx
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You do that. It’s too late for me … xx
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aaaagh!
I can’t ‘like’ that!
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Dead right you can’t.
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Impressive
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Ah yes, I too click on the read button instead of view post as they have put it near the top. It’s annoying. But no EM as yet…
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Your time may come …
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wow, Elon Musk 😂
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Not happy. Even though it’s unlikely to be true.
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Well I wouldn’t boast about that!
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I’m not boasting. I’m mortified.
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😂
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Oh no!
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Oh yes!
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I haven’t had that in a while. maybe I should check spam. I am getting what seems like comments that are AI generated though
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This wasn’t in spam. Just a WP comment thst EM and AN Other were new subsribers. My comments all seem to be from genuine followers. So far …
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The gmail ones have gone from mine. I am getting lots of weird stuff though
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It’s weird all round, isn’t it? And what, exactly, is the point???
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Some people were put on this world to be annoying pieces of shit
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That’s the best explanation. yet.
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I’ve had a regular majority China readership, since June. It makes me very wary.
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Indeed. What a pointless carry on it all seems to be. We bloggers seem to be powerless to do anything but shrug and ignore it all.
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Thankfully no Elon, but my stats went through the roof for several months. They seem to have calmed down now. I rarely look at them but this was so ridiculous I checked to see where they were coming from and, like Michael, it’s all about China.
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Yep, we all seem to be having variations of the same problem. I wish I knew what satisfaction is to be had from messing around with the sites of blameless bloggers. It’s not as if the bots, or whoever, can even see a result from their pointless activity.
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Wow, that is weird!
I think my blog has been scraped this week, huge views and all from China. We live in a strange world.
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I’ve been having ridiculous visitor numbers all year. From bots presumably who’ve never read one word of my posts. And yup. From China.
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Wow! You’re really drawing the big guns!
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Yeah, right. See my reply to Sarah (as in Toonsarah).
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Now there’s a coincidence – Elon Musk liked three of my posts overnight 😀 But he clearly hasn’t read them, as they were the standard post templates that come with a free WP account and as I moved immediately to self-hosting I never did anything with them! I remember once that he liked a tweet of mine, or it might have been an Instagram post, I’m not sure now. What I am sure of is that this isn’t actually Elon Musk but some sort of AI bot pretending to be him for some reason.
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Oh I’m well aware that THIS Elon Musk is some saddo with zero social skills hunched over his computer in some grotty attic somewhere. Hope he/she is having fun (It always seems to be ‘he’ though, doesn’t it?)
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I feel sorry for the bot. How low must he have sunk to pick Elon Musk of all people …
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Well, bots are low-life. So why not?
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I thought bots were AI and hence, slaves.
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That too.
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I don’t understand why the bots are subscribing at all. The names with 4-6 numbers afterward are not human I think. I find it absurd. Elon Musk sure gets around, Toonsarah and Margaret!
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I don’t get names with numbers. All are perfectly everyday sort of names. Like … er … Elon Musk.
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Commiserations! I guess with all the so called tech advances our genuine word press blogging community will suffer some decline in standards. I need to write a post!
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You do. Then – watch out! They may get you too!
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That could be dangerous, especially if these new followers are bots.
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So not a problem you’re suffering from? I seem to have lots of people commentig who know EXACTLY what I’m talking about.
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One of the things that I love about self-hosting, I don’t have to put up with the whims of WP.
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Ah, but you do have to put up with the whims of your server going down again … as it did yesterday. I’m yet to read your post!
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I’m getting a lot of this gmail followers as well. How many are real?
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I imagine they ARE real people, entirely ignorant of the fact that they are our followers!
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