Internet Dragnet Operations

There was a TV cop show called Dragnet when I was a kid and it was about cops watching criminals behave badly only so that they could arrest a larger batch when the time was right.

In this way, they avoided the illegal behavior of ‘entrapment’ as when a cop provides an overly strong incentive for a person to commit a crime, just so that they can arrest them.

With the internet, new sorts of dragnets are made possible and we occasionally hear about them, as when a bunch of child pornographers or human traffickers are arrested. (Yay!)

Meanwhile, the internet publishing industry has created a dragnet for ‘no-content book publishers’ and people who write paid-for product reviews.

Nicely done, Ingram, but why are YouTube videos in which people use lots of words to say very little so popular. Does that make more people think they are are learning something complex and valuable? Whatever works works, but it just irritates me. Get to the point!

The trouble with the sorts of people who engage in these sub-moral behaviors is that they are either very poor or very dumb and making those people’s lives harder isn’t something that anyone wants to do, but at the same time, we want to protect the system from leeches that drain the blood from legitimately creative people.

I suppose that it does make sense to allow the leeches to accumulate from time to time so that it is easier to scrape them off all in one batch, but in the meantime, people like me who played by the rules have to tolerate some blood suckers as we struggle to gain the attention of a real, human, non-bot audience.

There are the leeches who rewrite books in a style that is similar to that of a famous author.

• Mrs. Jellyby and Mr. Skimpole

There are the old hacks working within the system who are looking for shortcuts to generate their books.

• The Midnight Library

There are the leeches who are desperate to break into the system and make people think that they are cleverer than they are.

• Alone in the New Pollution

There are the leeches who self publish other people’s work because they are ambitious but lack a moral compass.

• The Fake Economies of the Internet

I have turned to blogging to heal the wounds such leeches have left behind.

I’ve even given up on the publishing industry and begun to post my books in some Quora spaces:

Myths of Modern Physics

A Blazing New World

Please follow them for authentic, well thought out content that is worth your time… or just follow this blog.

Content organization and presentation is key and what I have at the moment is

• 200 blog posts that take the form of long-form journalism
• 800 quora posts in shorter form.
• 6 books that organize this content into a continuous narrative that makes sense of some complex issues

Since I’m not willing to buy reviews, bots, or followers, I have to try other methods to establish myself as a professional writer.

Despite the climb I’m attempting, I try to remind myself that when it comes to writing, you can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you find that you get what you need. And that need may be as simple as sorting out a few thoughts. Sometimes it is better not to satisfy your greed for attention because attention isn’t what you need. Attention might change you into someone you wouldn’t want to be. Then you see that it might’ve been better to start with self-acceptance.

If you would like to hear this read aloud, please try this video! (I sing at the end)

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The picture of a fishing net is from Ian Casnoff and prints are available from: https://bureo.co/pages/bureo-collection2