Saturday, January 31, 2026

The Bot That I Mistook For a Person

This past week it first appeared that an ex might be spending time on my blog.  As it later turned out, it was a Singaporean bot, but before I realized that fact I had unfortunately exhumed a ghost.

Having previously blogged in the pre-bot era, I hadn't considered that bots would be regularly scraping my blog for content, and that the results would show in my usage statistics unless I implemented new and even more complicated tools to analyze site traffic.

At this point many years later, I only had vague and fond memories of this ex and how he and I had parted: something involving him unilaterally deciding to make a major international move, and me breaking up with him as a result.  Not remembering when I had last spoken with him and expecting to find something about a relatively tender farewell, I went to my old email account and searched for his name.  My friends, this was a huge mistake.

My query unearthed a number of messages within which his bruised ego was exposed, written to me when I was in the midst of a health crisis, and that would have been much more kind had they been written by a bot.  Apparently I had been interacting with a subhuman entity all along.  

At this late date it seems I will not be receiving an apology, nor will I be thinking kindly of that ex.  I wish I hadn't looked back.

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