A Kindred Soul 2.0

What is the world coming to? On Friday, someone left an unusual comment on one of my posts, last week's New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest here. It offers me, of all people, the chance to collaborate in creating New Yorker cartoons. The commenter assumes, I think, that I would like to be on the creative side of New Yorker cartoons—well, who wouldn't?—and that I would have to be the artist. That's an odd assumption to make on a post where I'm trying my hand at captioning, but probably not a terrible guess anyway.

Even stranger, the commenter created a brand new profile just for this comment, one that plays fast and loose with my own blog title. The profile apparently tries to match my interests too. To Kill a Mockingbird is a pretty good, if pretty obvious, choice for Favorite Books. For Favorite Music and Movies, though, Daft Punk and "The Ring" are not so spot on.

Well, there you have it: a probably fake profile and a probably fake offer of collaboration. For all I know there are AI bots that go around to millions of sites and try to engage bloggers by mimicking their interests. But to what end? Something nefarious, I suspect.

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