All Is Phony

Bob Dylan famously opined in the lyrics of one of his early songs "All is phony." Which is why Google and their system of analytics supposedly designed to showcase good, original content on the internet, and punish those using dirty tricks like stealing or scraping content, I was excited, because I thought for once in my life I was about to see fairness applied to a situation. Of course I was proven wrong, and the genius Bob Dylan was once again proven right, as fifteen or so years later it's impossible to find anything on the internet, and the first entry for every notable topic is invariably a crowd-sourced dictionary written and edited by the same dishonest schlubs and losers standing behind you on line at the supermarket talking about Star Wars. Wikipedia is by definition a fake dictionary edited and written by those with no expertise and soliciting surface information that may or not be utterly false depending on what time of day you read it. 

The thing about what I do here at Zombie Logic is that I make new, real, original stuff and post it to a real audience. Am I an expert on any of the topics I write about? Maybe. Maybe not. 

SEO is a really hard task. It is a chore. But it is also a challenge, something like a puzzle. Once you know what the great computer is looking for, one should be able to feed in the required data and be rewarded by good search rankings, traffic, and sales. But not in this world that inspires artists like Bob Dylan to throw their hands up and say "it's alright mom if I can't please them." 

Search engine optimization is a chore fraught with many vagaries. The system is mostly inscrutable. One certainty is what Google and other search engines tell you they are looking for and trying to reward in their search engine rankings: credible sites that play by the rules and produce new and original content of high quality on a regular basis.

So.......??????????????????????????????????

I would be producing the content I now do for an audience whether or not the internet was ever created. I do produce this content for a non-internet audience and did so before the internet existed, so the advent of a new medium where I could hypothetically reach a large audience and on occasion even sell them some of my work was an exciting prospect. It just has never become the reality. I understand what they say in sports that after a certain amount of games you are what your record says you are regardless of injury, bad luck, or unforseen setbacks is true. Over a million people have been here. Judgement seemingly has been passed. 

But one thing I can tell you is it's all pretty phony. What the search engines tell you they want and what they actually reward seem to be two different things, and if there's one thing I despise even more than phoniness, it's hypocrisy.  Pin It