The Visible Hand of the Market

Hit-counting is a very nasty habit, but I suppose anyone who posts something online falls into it and there's a genuine curiousity in seeing which posts get only a handful of accidental hits and which manage to break out of double-digits. By that alone you should be able to tell that my ranting reaches so negligible an audience that I'd be better off writing this as toilet-stall graffiti. But however inept I am at making myself heard by sentient beings, anyone can draw the attention of various incarnations of corporations' social control apparatus.

There are apparently endless datamining services out there, and though Google is rather apt at hiding their activity from its own users, occasionally a new one will for a period register its access as true hits. As an outsider to the whole corporate bean-counting circle-jerk, this offers me a little glimpse into the shallow yet murky waters of their parasitism. The bullshit that bullshitters tell each other can sometimes paradoxically leak a bit of unintended truth.

For instance, the validity of my existence has recently come under scrutiny by the keyword-combing algorithms of a lovely new little nest of leeches. And though most of their nonsense is pretty standard, they did make one amusing Freudian slip.

"Comprehensive analysis of your website for its compliance with the website development and SEO industry requirements. Using the results of this analysis you can increase search engines and user trust in your website."

 

I had to look up what the SEO "industry" is. Seems about as productive as any other such "industry" of corporate parasitism like advertising or finance. The crucial point is a single word: compliance. Compliance = trust. Compliance costs. This is partly what I was talking about in one of my earliest posts here. The new model of censorship ensures that unwanted social elements are never recognized by promoting their competition. To get in you must pay your dues by hiring such industry insiders, and you're either in or you're nothing. This sort of mafia tribute is hardly new. It's how trade guilds operated for centuries.

Comply, or you're nobody. And if you can't afford to comply, you are nobody by definition. If you're not already somebody, you will be forever nobody.

Why, Internet, you're older than you look.