Huffington Post: No Comment

The Huffington Post has apparently been taken over by the spiritual descendants of Franz Kafka and Joseph Heller, as evidenced by their new comments policy.

recapcha THIS

Or maybe it’s just me, technotard that I am, because there are still comments below all the articles, presumably by people who have managed to get through (or paid shills, a possibility which cannot be entirely discounted, but that would be a boneheaded business move on their part seeing as how they can get unlimited content for free), and if any of my  readers have managed to get through the maze I would appreciate your helpful hints.

Anyway, I went to leave a smartass reply to someone preaching inter-party civility (leave the poor Republican child molester alone) and got a pop up window saying (I’m paraphrasing) “In order to promote an atmosphere of civility….” and my first thought was “How the fuck did they know what I was going to say?”

Then, I went to leave an original  comment and got the same notification.  So, realizing that I was not being specifically targeted, and realizing that I had no choice, I clicked on the thingie to re-verify my account.

Apparently, Huffpo is now owned by facebook, because in order to sign in you have to agree that they get access to your friends list and all that.  Still, we all know that there is no privacy left on the internet so I was just clicking yes, yes, yes, whatever, of course I’ve read the terms of agreement (has anybody every actually read the terms of agreement? on anything?), I accept everything, just let me back in, please, I’m lonely out here and having commenter withdrawal, but then there was a little reddish  brown triangle thingie next to my e-mail address box saying “this address is already taken.”

Well, of course it is.  It’s taken by me.  That’s why it was listed there.  It’s been on file with them for as long as I’ve been commenting there.  6 years? 8 years?  I don’t know.  If it’s taken by somebody else, then they took it after me, and I’d like to know how they managed that.  It’s not impossible, I suppose.  Willie Watson is not an unusual name.  If I google it I find tons of us.

So, I tried another e-mail address I sometimes use which, unless somebody who shares my name is also running a language school, is probably unique, but they weren’t having that, either.

So, I found the article where they talked about the new system and there was a link to send an e-mail direct to HP, so I followed that, again, diligently filling in all of the boxes which had the red asterisk meaning “obligatory,” and I got to the end and clicked “submit” (this is why I think artificial intelligence has already arrived, an extremely malevolent artificial intelligence, intent on making human beings subservient and dominating the world: submit.  Any time you want to apply for anything, or make a complaint or a comment: submit.  Yield.  Surrender.  Say uncle. Submit.

And I got back a reply saying “your recapcha did not match something or other” which disturbed me for 3 reasons. First, I hate those capcha thingies.  It’s a robot asking you to prove you are not a robot.  How insulting is that?  It’s like putting a 12 year old at the door to check your ID and make sure you’re 21.  Secondly, it wasn’t marked as an obligatory box.  Third, there WAS NO FUCKING RECAPCHA WORD.  They were asking me to copy something that wasn’t there.

So, I found the twitter account of the guy who wrote the article, some fucking worthless piece of shit moron named Tim Macdonald, and sent him a note.  But, you know, twitter.