SEO is an Electric Sheep
I have recently trained to write opinion articles for a website (which, in the end, didn’t work out for me). There are a few words that I had heard before and never really understood: Content Value, Back Links, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In the case of Content Value, it is adding more information for a reader. An example for me would be: I have been fired from this job because, essentially, someone didn’t like me. That is some additional information that relates to this article. Back Links are relating to older posts in order to keep a person on the website (so that ads can be more effective). An example: Check out this article regarding Saturday Night Live (SNL) sketches featuring a superhero, like Wonder Woman, Batman, or Hawkeye. Finally, SEO is something that even the people wielding it barely understand; it is more like a belief system than an actual goal. However, as an example, I’ve already used it in this paragraph wherever you see proper nouns and pop culture references.
My most popular Medium article is Adira Tal; or, No Future for the Gender Dissident, which has over 120 reads out of 200 views (which is a good thing, my partner tells me as a web programmer). The article has an estimated 50 uses of SEO terms, which means that it appears more frequently in search engines who are looking for LGBTQ+ Star Trek references. The algorithm in Google’s search engine has deemed this article as important to place more highly on their list of results because of this term usage. It has an elevated status among the millions of possible responses, ranging in accuracy from “fairly accurate” to “this relates in no way whatsoever; What the hell, Google?” It has determined the worth of my article based on a completely pointless rating system. On the other hand, a work of horror poetry that I did in March has 0 reads. Now, I’m not a poet, so I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to read my bad goth poetry. So, let’s go with my most personally vulnerable post: “The Problem with Kathi,” a work of CNF (my main area of writing focus right now).
The post represents the first time I wrote exclusively about my mom, a topic that is so personally painful that I cannot yet face it in my writing. I can write about cruel domestic violence that I’ve suffered, but I can’t write about a Snoopy book that makes me cry just to think about it. The things done were not violent but so personally traumatic that the weight of them crushes me even now, 9 years after she and I last spoke. I feel shrunken just in remembering them. That article might not be my best written piece (yet), but if what is truly important in memoir writing is honesty, according to Mary Karr, then that work has triple platinum status. It is my most authentic and raw topic to date. It has had precisely 3 reads, and two of those are from people I know personally (thanks B and Chep). A quick scan of the post shows maybe one SEO term. So, SEO is a race for status elevation among impossible and limitless circumstances. It is an electric animal (referencing Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick) which I have not read, but thought it was a great pop culture reference.
Here’s a quick game: How many SEO term uses have I put in this opinion article? I count about 19 to this point, but tell me if you see more. Is this my most poignant article? No. I hope that maybe I indicated how I feel about doing this kind of work — meaningless but helpful to my career goals — and how I see search engine optimization. AI is basically SEO if it were a person, what my partner calls “a virtual dumbass that is always wrong,” based on a meme we saw. The irony of us basically becoming SEO machines through meme culture isn’t lost on me. But, it does make me pretty sad. As I frequently am, I’m reminded of Horkheimer and Adorno’s Kulturindustrie, the single most life-changing text I’ve ever read. I always used to think of art as an expression of one’s soul, but that soul is now packaged and commodified, our trauma needs to make it to BookTok. And maybe if I’m really good at playing this game, I’ll be able to, one day, buy a real sheep.
