I don’t post as much as I once did. I still follow more prolific bloggers. New posts show up in my WordPress Reader daily. I like them and comment on them. The original blogger mostly responds.
However, WordPress will sometimes put my comments in prison. This means my comment will appear—but only to me—under other comments with the caveat “Your comment is awaiting moderation.” Usually this happens when I use profanity, because a) I swear A LOT and 2) WordPress is a prissy little bitch.
WordPress supposedly notifies the original blogger/judge that my comment is languishing in prison. The blogger/judge laughs uproariously at my wit, scolds WordPress for yet ANOTHER wrongful arrest, and approves my comment, thus releasing me from WordPress prison. My comment rejoins society, utterly unchastened, and returns to run its potty mouth among the more decorous comments.
In some cases, WordPress, like ICE, says, “Fuck that due process shit” and doesn’t notify the original blogger that a comment is awaiting moderation. Midwest Mark once got super peeved that he wrote a whole eloquent paragraph in my comments that WordPress immediately imprisoned. WordPress never notified me, but Mark managed to smuggle a message out of prison (i.e., wrote a second comment telling me his first comment had been disappeared).
WordPress frequently flagged my comments on the now retired (and much-missed!) blog of Ally Bean (probably because profanity at The Spectacled Bean was not the done thing). Since Ally is on social media, I’d sometimes tag her on Threads and let her know I was in WP prison. She would always bail me out.
But this past week, something new happened. I commented on multiple blogs and went on my merry way. No one responded. At first I assumed it was user error—either I’d forgotten to hit “send” or the cat had jumped on my keyboard at an inopportune moment. I went back to River Girl, Kate, and 2 Summers and put in my comments again.
Crickets.
Was I not hilarious? Were they not entertained? They all usually responded, even if just with a smiley face (or a frowny face).
As a lifelong catastrophizer, this issue kept me up at night. Had I been blacklisted? Were bloggers from multiple continents in some group chat, looking at my repeated, frantic comments and sniggering?!
My mind goes to increasingly implausible places at 3 AM.
I made multiple attempts. My comments appeared to go through:
But when I checked back later, my comments had disappeared.
I logged out of WordPress. Rebooted my computer. Used different browsers. Tried my phone. Changed passwords. Checked to see if my website or my email was being used for spam or other nefarious purposes. I found nothing.
I kept trying:
My comments continued disappearing within minutes.
I commented with email only:
My comment vanished within minutes. The only blog currently retaining my comments is Deb’s Despatches (based in the UK).
I contacted WordPress. Their useless AI assistant told me that humans at WP are reserved for those who pay for premium services ($20-$200 per month). Sooooo…imprisoning IPs without premium service would be a good way to convince them to pay for premium service, perhaps?
Eventually, my husband/tech support will work on this. For a conjugal price, no doubt.
For now, I’ve left bloggers messages on their social media telling them about my disappearing comments.
Maybe I’m in their spam folders.
Maybe Chinese hackers finally bested Andy and landed my IP address on Akismet’s no-fly list.
Maybe it’s time to emulate Ally and bail on blogging.
In case your comments also disappear, you can find me on Threads, Instagram, BlueSky, or Facebook.