Online forums, not quite gone, not quite forgotten

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Online forums, not quite gone, not quite forgotten

25 August 2026

There’s an idea the old discussion forums, once a fixture on the web, fell out of favour because after a decade or two, people wanted a change. Social media was that change, and we all flocked there.

But from the late nineties (though they’d been around earlier), through to maybe the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, online forums were the place to meet and interact with others.

They weren’t always the most civil of places, like social media today, but it seemed like you didn’t need to be an influencer to be noticed. Plus you chose what to read, or not, no algorithm involved.

Fast forward to today, and forums are not so common, though there’s still a few going that are also quite active. Boards.ie, a forum based in Ireland, is one example that comes to mind.

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technology, trends, web history

AI and apps, the tools used in 2026 to apply for work

20 August 2026

I can’t remember the last time I applied for a permanent full-time job, but it was in the years soon after I left school. I held a couple of these sorts of jobs, but have pretty much worked freelance since. Leads there have come through people I know, or even disassociated.

It’s fair to say I have no idea what the — for want of a better word — formal process is today.

The last time I had what most people would probably consider to a be a “normal” job interview, I sat before a three-person panel. Needless to say things are quite different in 2026, as Millie Muroi writes (in a pay-walled article) for The Sydney Morning Herald.

One-third of Australian companies are said to use AI in their recruiting today. And if the experience of applying for work, in this instance a casual role at a large Australian discount department store chain, is anything to go by, it seems you don’t encounter a single person. At least initially.

The process, which Muroi partly filmed (not pay-walled), involves typing responses to questions posed by an AI chatbot, from wherever you happen to be. No need to show up in person anymore. She later received an email offering some “personalised” insights, which was AI generated.

It is claimed this practice means everyone’s applications are “seen”, and responded to. Is that a plus?

I expect the recruiting stage conducted by the AI chatbot results in a shortlist of candidates, who, following vetting by a person in HR, would then go in for a face-to-face meeting.

I doubt white-collar recruitment occurs in the quite the same fashion, though AI no doubt sifts through applications, which probably have to be lodged through LinkedIn. Fingers crossed my current line of work holds up, as job hunting using LinkedIn is not something I would relish.

AI slop exposes fraudulent publishing offer to Australian author Mary Colussi

18 August 2026

Touch Grass, the debut novel of Sydney based Australian author Mary Colussi, was published in June this year. And a fraudulent publishing deal was not too far behind. In this instance though AI slop played a part in giving the scam away.

An email sent to Colussi, apparently from a representative of a well-known publishing house in the UK, was full of praise for Touch Grass. Curiously though comments about the novel’s plot were limited only to what had been published online in its synopsis.

This despite claims by the publishing house rep that they’d read the book. Their AOL (once America Online) email address was also something of a give away, to say nothing of the request for money in exchange for a publishing deal.

While this wasn’t the best executed fraud attempt, as AI agents evolve their efforts will no doubt become more convincing. But asking an author to pay to be published would still arouse suspicion.

Traditional publishing houses do not ask writers for money, rather they pay out in the form of an advance. The objective of these scams though is catch people — particularly newcomers to the industry — off guard, and this is where they might succeed.

Is a comeback nigh for the tradie to CEO cappuccino?

18 August 2026

A few years ago I did an online coffee quiz. Highly scientific no doubt. My taste in coffee was — because I’m primarily a cappuccino drinker — adjudged to be “entry level”. Nice.

I occasionally partake of other varieties, like short black or piccolo, but they’re just a little light on coffee (and froth, and chocolate). I was surprised though to lean that Millennials, and Generation X coffee drinkers, are said to be ordering more capps recently. Gen X gets a few things right.

An article in The Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Food section, with a headline proclaiming “cappuccinos won’t give you street cred” is pay-walled — an article about cappuccinos pay-walled, what can I say? — but you can catch the gist on Good Food’s Instagram page.

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Australia, coffee, trends

AI scrapers use bogus URL tracking tags to make website visits seem legit

17 August 2026

Screenshot of disassociated.com web analytics app, showing two examples of bogus tracking tags referred to in this article.

It looks like AI scrapers have been using a surreptitious method of making their marauding presence appear legitimate, this time by appending a bogus query parameter, or tracking tag, to the URL of the webpage they are targeting.

In the last month or so, I have seen a stack of page visit items looking something like this:
https://disassociated.com/?ref=yourwebsitepage/213page/page/page/ 14page/16page/page/2page…

I’ve replaced the actual website name with the generic yourwebsite marker in the above example.

What is particularly insidious though, is the way the crawlers are using the names of reputable websites and blogs that have linked to disassociated in the past.

Initially I thought some of these blogs had mentioned my website again, but after having a closer look at them, this is not the case. There’s also the detail that my web analytics app does not identify a referring page from the website supposedly sending visitors my way.

The frequency of visits doesn’t stack up either. I’m sure the blogs cited in the /?ref= parameter, that are supposed to be linking here, have many (human) readers, but I can’t imagine every last person, sometimes thousands of them, have been clicking through to my website.

Another possibility was my website had been shared in a newsletter. Usually though the URL query, or UTM parameter, I see in newsletters are along the lines of say ?utm_content, or ?utm_source.

One of the query parameters seen in the screenshot from my web analytics app does is ?utm_source though. However, with one exception I think, none the cited websites publish newsletters.

Also, if any of the cited websites were legitimately sending traffic here using a tracking tag, I doubt they’d use such a nonsensical URL path… page/14page/16page/page/2page… what?

It does puzzles me why these scrapers only seem to be targeting the front page of my website. Only a small amount of the total content posted here is visible there. But they’re AI bots, no doubt they know what they’re doing.

In the meantime, I’ll have to get used to seeing these analytics entries until I can figure out a way to block or mask them. That might be easier to say than do though.

But kudos (ironically) to Claude for acknowledging disassociated in response to a query about the Tiny Awards, in the above image. It’s much appreciated, truly, but doesn’t happen often enough.

LinkedIn CringeBot 3000, generating AI slop of the best quality

13 August 2026

Since the volume of slop-in-general is of epidemic proportions on the platform, it makes perfect sense an AI agent write actual AI slop for consumption there.

LinkedIn users can report AI slop, but what about the rest of it?

1 August 2026

Members of the professional network will be able to flag posts they think are AI generated. I haven’t been a LinkedIn participant in years — I have a personal website, why would I? — but it seems to me slop has been a problem on the platform since before AI was what it is.

The threat of toxic content on decentralised social media platforms

31 July 2026

Mastodon is a truly decentralised micro-bloging platform. Anyone sufficiently motivated, and technically proficient, can start their own instance, or community.

Depending on the administrator, instances can be completely isolated, accessible only to its members, or federated, that is, interconnected to all other instances that are likewise federated.

Presently there eight-thousand instances, give or take, and each has, or can have, its own individual community guidelines and moderation policies.

This can mean content permissible on one instance might be unacceptable somewhere else. But if that instance is federated, members’ posts may be visible to just about all Mastodon members.

It’s something that can allow content of a toxic nature to disseminate freely across the Mastodon network, as there are no standard platform-wide moderation policies.

And according to research carried out by Pasan Kamburugamuwa and Olga Scrivner, toxic content is becoming more prevalent on Mastodon.

Tens of millions of people migrated to places like Mastodon and Bluesky, to escape the toxicity that had become rife on other social media platforms. It’s unfortunate, to say the least, that content many consider unacceptable, is taking hold.

Mastodon’s decentralised structure is one of its advantages. For one, it means no single person, or entity, can assume control of the entire network, and do with it as they please.

But decentralisation is a double-edged sword, if it allows people to set up shop in their own corner, and spread content others don’t want to see.

Finding a solution in an environment such as Mastodon’s will be challenging.

AI does not compose my pickup lines, I do, have the t-shirt to prove it

29 July 2026

Natalie Kaufman, writing for the Wall Street Journal, about an apparent trend in early twenty-somethings, to rely on AI agents to supply them with conversation starters, and pickup lines.

The article is paywalled, but would you really want to read about this?

I think these things are best learned through experience, and watching other people, rather than turning to AI for pointers. It gives me an idea for a t-shirt though.

Some websites and blogs sport not by AI buttons, as a way of reassuring readers their content was written by a person, and not an AI agent.

People who want others to know their conversation starters, and, where applicable, pickup lines, are their own effort, could wear a not by AI-style t-shirt, perhaps bearing the slogan “AI does not compose my pickup lines, I do”.

It might help eliminate the confusion as to what banter is AI-generated, and what is not.

For the record, my pickup lines are reserved for the only person who reads this website…

Update: Simon at Firesphere has created a mockup of my no-AI t-shirt idea. Green is an ideal colour choice to, it’s affirming, and noticeable. Awesome, thanks Simon.

To read more, pick up a book not your phone, no wait…

23 July 2026

Hobart, Tasmania, based Australian software engineer Elia Scotto:

First of all, you don’t have to make time to read. What you need to do is read every single time you are not doing something else. In today’s world, most people pick up their phones as soon as they get a moment of inactivity. Serious readers pick up their books instead.

I’ve been having difficulty finding time to read books recently, for various reasons, and am still working on a way to resolve this.

Since removing most of the social media apps from my phone though, I’m not spending so much time looking at it. That’s eventually going to free up some time to read.

Ironically though, I’ll probably end up reading e-books, on my phone. I know that isn’t the idea, but it’s better than not reading at all. Besides, I don’t like hauling physical media around.

But, if you feel you don’t have enough time to read books, whether print or electronic, try deleting the social media apps from your phone, as a first step.

Reading books has to be more fulfilling than doomscrolling social day-in and day-out.

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