Bye Bye Bots

I don’t really know what the hell a bot is or how it works and frankly, am not that interested in finding out. But a few years ago, when I had a big four or five day spike in the number of people who theoretically read my Blogposts, people told me it was probably bots. So when it started to dramatically rise at the beginning of the month, I didn’t pay it much mind. 

 

But then it kept going. I mean from the usual 50 to 100 readers a day (at best) to 4,000 per day! For some three weeks in a row! Was it my sudden fame as a movie star? The anticipation and then publication of my new book? My ship finally coming in?

 

I mentioned it to my daughter and she suggested I look on the blog to find out more. I did find something that looked suspicious. An operating system called Android and some 95% of the hits coming from Singapore. A place where I’ve actually done a lot of work, but not enough to suddenly become famous there. 

So oh well. It was a fun brief fantasy that that many people might have cared about the kind of ideas and stories I share here. But as today’s count shows, the party’s over. Back to 10. 

 

Meanwhile, it’s my daughter’s birthday today and I thought my gift for her would be to reprint one of her recent pieces while the readership was high. Which I still will do in the hopes that you’ll agree that she’s a wonderful writer with important things to say and a great flair for saying them. And that perhaps you’ll subscribe to her Mom, Interrupted series on Substack.

 

Meanwhile, it looks like the Androids in Singapore are going to miss it. Their loss. The rest of you humans, stay tuned.