Please don't sock-puppet on my pathetic blog

By Todd Stadler · Wednesday, February 13, 2008 12:15am

If you read my blog a lot, then you know how few people read my blog a lot.

No doubt you've tried to drop references to it in conversation ("You know, like Todd mentioned on Cockahoop last week?"), only to have people stare blankly at you, sniff derisively, or mention how that URL is blocked for some reason at their office.

But the point is that this blog, it's not so popular. Which makes it all the more goofy that anyone would bother writing fake comments in an attempt to generate fake commenter consensus. Especially on an old entry. Let me explain.

Over two years ago, I wrote an entry, the sole point of which was to show off the ridiculous amount of time I spent turning a photo of Astros players celebrating into an animated GIF featuring a prancing Luke Scott (who then played for the Astros). Such was my free time in 2005.

As might be expected, it generated all of three comments in the month after I posted it. Which, relative to the usual reader feedback on my blog, was something of a comment brouhaha.

Eighteen months passed without any further comments.

And then, in April of 2007, along came one "haley kettler", who decided that what the world most needed to know was that "man luke you are so hot. i love you!!"

Now, if you are familiar with my blog, then you know two things. First, that my blog is not popular. But we already covered that. And second, that, as unpopular as it is, it seems to attract a certain class of person who is either too ignorant or too lazy to discover that the Google search result for the name they typed in does not, in fact, lead them to a page written by that person, but merely to a page mentioning that person.

I speak, of course, of Raven Symone and her Web-illiterate fans who so commandeered an otherwise unrelated blog entry that I was forced to alter my blog code so I could disable further comments.

I bring all this up for several reasons. One is that I want to remind you that I still appear on the first page of Google results for [Raven Symone phone number], though my efforts to curtail discussion on that entry have forced her fans to misdirect their energies elsewhere, thereby decreasing my Google relevance.

The other reason I bring this up is that it would seem that Haley Kettler (if that is her real name), like the Raven-bots before her, was searching for something related to a famous person (in this case, one Luke Scott) and posted a comment on one of the many random results that Google provided her.

It being her prerogative to display such charming naivete for all the Web to see, I welcome such behavior, or at least tolerate it. At least one could say that she was brief in her actions — something that could not be said of my own Web-wide embarrassment (that is, this blog, which, have I mentioned, is not popular in spite of your reading it).

Anyhow, nearly a year passed with no reactions to Haley's professed love for Luke.

Then, somebody calling herself "llola" Googled for [Haley Kettler] and found the aforementioned blog entry with Haley's comment in it as the first result. I know this because the Internet told me, and the Internet knows all things. And because I have Google Analytics installed on my blog. Creepy? Perhaps, but such are our modern times. Google knows. Ahem.

Curiously, though "llola" was searching for pages related to Haley Kettler, she then made the same mistake that Haley did upon finding my blog. To wit, she imagined that she was communicating directly with Mr. Scott, as opposed to leaving a comment on some random (did I mention unpopular?) blog.

"hunter pence is sexier than you no doubt about it and looks better in the astros uniform than you did that is why you got traded," she said. And while I will leave the merits of Mr. Pence's relative lust-engendering qualities vis-a-vis Mr. Scott undebated, I will note that "llola" submitted her comment with an email address that strongly suggests her name is S. Kettler. Perhaps an inability to discern the authorship of a Web page runs in the Kettler family.

But, as they say, that's not all. S. Kettler waited all of two minutes after her first post before pretending to be someone else and seconding her own comment. (How do I know it's the same person? They used the same IP address and posted within two minutes of each other on an otherwise sparsely viewed entry. Please.)

Posting as "beavis", Ms. Kettler wrote that "i think that girl llola is right ............. haha what you gotta say bout that"

Here's what I gotta say bout that: please don't sock-puppet on my pathetic blog. Thanks.