Was that a veiled ‘you look so good every time you wear that dress’ backhanded compliment?

I’m glad you explained it because Australia’s peaked cranium and ‘there’s way too many teeth in that mouth’ grin were a little disconcerting. Do all Europeans and Africans have such gargantuan overbites? Seems like they would have died off from malnourishment from being unable to properly chew food by now. And apparently, all of earth’s babies and children have the skulls of anime characters. This is one crazy meme, mate. It makes me fear intercontinental travel.

He’s becoming self aware, Agent Smith. This cannot be permitted. The very thought will spread like a disease and contaminate the entire Matrix. Take all measures necessary to keep him plugged in. He cannot wake up. Do NOT let him wake UP!

I almost feel like your username, @strongsad. What’s funny is that if you look at the posting history, these ‘bots’ - assuming they’re not real people - have been used for quite some time. It looks like FS either made a bunch of fake accounts in the early years to goose up their membership numbers (to justify charging advertisers more money) or the ‘bots’ are unused accounts that FS highjacked and maintained to keep active member numbers high. They all have approximately the same number of posts and comments. I’m guessing their AI or the FS admins comment on them enough to look active but not so often that you associate a ‘personality’ or a ‘voice’ with the account. From what I’ve seen, @vichy is the only one who’s commented and kinda said ‘I’m not a bot’ but didn’t explicitly deny it. This is just my ‘red yarn linking push-pinned photos on a cork board’ conspiracy theory, though. Could be totally wrong.

As they say, booty over comfort.

@cakelover I was rush-posting on my way outside and thought it was the San Francisco Bay Guardian! Would’ve been only slightly less questionable reporting, LOL. Anyway, there’s the article. Take it as you will.

I think the issue is transparency. @newowner doesn’t owe the users any explanations - it’s their company, they can run it how they want. But many people have been on here for awhile, there’s a strong sense of family and community, and it’d be ‘nice’ to understand what’s going on rather than try to guess from pattern changes. @newowner bought a new toy because he thinks it can make money and now he’s pushing buttons and pulling levers to see what does. The ‘bot thing’ plus more ads feels fishy, like he’s trying to inflate his active member count to charge more for ad placements. But we’ll see how that plays out. Random memory: I ‘think’ I remember FS did an ‘ask us anything’ forum once WAY back in time when the gods still spoke with mortals. @newowner and @zeus don’t owe us a thing - but given the recent talks of leaving, some type of official message from the heavens above would just be a really nice touch.

I usually do the ‘say-hello-put-on-the-headphones-look-out-the-window’ technique. But this sign would be a really nice norm for shared rides.

@mrscollector Thank you very much. Oddly, I never got a ‘you were mentioned in’ notification even though I see your summoning. Is there a way to go to Your Profile>Comments and ‘back into’ the post where you commented from there? Clicking the blue title in Notifications is fine but it can be hard to find the post if you don’t remember the title or if 1,000 people commented. If you have any pointers, let me know.

But why would they do that? To keep fresh content on the site? To boost ‘active member’ counts? And why now?

@mrscollector I replied to you on the @cycy post where he announced that he was leaving but I can’t find his post itself (I can see my comment - ‘I agree with @mrscollector on this one...’ - but no idea how to backtrack into the post). Is there any way you can reply to my reply so I can put the link here for reference?

Hmm. I wonder if my hypothetical about making bots (or in this case, accounts) to make FS a more attractive target for purchase and ad revenue might be true? *gets banned seconds after hitting Post Comment*