Some people live their life by tip-toeing around the elephant in the room. Not here at Futfanatico. Nope. When we see the elephant has escaped from the barn, we roll up our sleeves, give the missus a shouting, and then push that feller back into the barn where he belongs.
And that is exactly what I did with Dr. Moschlavious Guperteer, the sinister, cunning Sith Lord of the inter-galactic SEO Empire.
I know that some people wanted a feel good ending, like the Puskas “come to goat’s blood” moment. While others anticipated a highly dramatic climax sort of like….
Luckily, we were able to avoid Sith lightning, fingercuts, and my father didn’t need to lend me a hand. However, I did contemplate the use of an online weapon so powerful, so unique, so catastrophic to the SEO, that I had doubts about using it. What is this XHTML Death Star? I prefer to call it the A-bomb. And by A-bomb, I obviously mean “a rel=”no follow”.
The premise of SEO advertising is simple – insert key terms frequently and consistently to climb the search engine ladder. First, use terms that are frequently searched. Second, place text links on one site to point to another. Each link counts as a vote for the search engines, thus strengthening the receiving page’s ranks. Then, jackpot!
But this pro forma algorithm, like all works of engineering, has the flaw of overlooking the emotional and “human” component. Google crafted and revises the formula to reflect the internet. But regardless of the co-efficients and equations, this entity called a “human being” gets on the internet to plagiarize for a term paper or amuse his or herself. Google tries to spend its spider-monkey bots out and about frequently capture the actions of these human beings”, but we’ve seen that play out before. And it’s not pretty.
Caught up in this cyberspace of pagerank command and conquer lies the soccersphere. I’ve had no problem with the occasional link to foot the server fees – but when the Doctor came to me promising untold riches beyond my wildest imagination, I faced the classic dilemma of “how much is my soul worth?” After all, Junito could use some wicked new Nike boots to match his soon-to-be-purchased Oozil jersey.
I rationalized that the tension between commerce and art were not irreconcilable. Andy Warhol embraced both, although his “Jewish Genius series” reeked of arrears and late mortgage payments more than inspiration. I figured I could withstand the nefarious and indestructible force that turns capitalism into short-term profiteering cronyism. I was wrong.
Dr. Guperteer in the span of one week turned my posts into the SEO nirvana of redundant key terms. Yet, to the human eye, everything flipped upside down. My concise, articulate, yet creatively incoherent sentences gave rise to repetitive paragraphs with now progress in themes. I knew something had to be done. Oh, and the Doctor disabled my “not as friendly SEO” posting.
In the States, we view problems as mountains to be climbed. The immediate reaction is to react immediately. The knee-jerk response is shoot first, ask questions later, and if you don’t like the answers to those questions, either destroy the evidence or intimidate the questioner. So I prepared my “A Bomb”, crafting my revenge…
But, the reality and whims of the SEO world made my response futile and obsolete within milliseconds. Trying an analytical approach to understanding and ultimately defeating marketing is like trying to train a pig – ultimately, you and the pig grow exhausted and annoyed more than anything else. Plus, the good Doctor disappeared.
The Doctor got what he wanted and got out of town. I feel violated – more psychologically than physically, although I’m still awaiting the results from the police labs for any traces of trackbacks or viruses. As for the site? Well, battered, abused, but still here, we bravely march on in our commercially-irreverent but blissful boots. The snare picked up a different beat last week, but has gracefully returned to a beat that only our ears can hear.
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