The Fawning AI/Bot Commenters are Inflating My Ego to a Dangerous Degree

I kind of like it, but should I?

Image: Wikimedia Commons

After more than two decades writing online, I have grown accustomed to trolls. I have received comments calling me a God-hating heretic, a Bible-thumper, a libtard, and a right-wing whack job, sometimes all for the same story (go figure). Unless it’s something really offensive, I don’t even bother to block the trolls anymore; their mommy clearly didn’t hug them enough when they were children, and I don’t want to add to their unresolved trauma. The poor things just crave validation.

OK, nothing in the above paragraph after the phrase “go figure” is true. I feel the same way about trolls as I do about sushi and Celine Dion, as you can tell from the piece below:

An Open Invitation to the Trolls: Go Intercourse Yourself

Trolls are one thing; I know how to deal with them. But I am completely flummoxed about how to feel about the newest phenomenon on this site: the AI-generated comments that are so fawning and flowery that I almost blush reading them. I thought I was the only one getting them until Scott-Ryan Abt wrote…