Bots are wearing me down.

It was one thing to write massive fics that nobody actually reads and comments on past the first few chapters, but seeing a comment notification or, as happened to me this morning, multiple comment notifications and having them all be bots is just too much, man.

I've always gotten them every now and then, but lately it just feels so incessant on AO3. I've published only 5 chapters of this fic, in the last week or so, and gotten something like thrice that number of bot comments.

And you know what? At least if it's a comment trying to scam me in some way, I understand why the bot was made, like hey, assholes gotta try to hustle people. What's even the point of bots that leave non-negative, non-scammy comments, though? Who does this benefit. What's the point.

My stuff already inherently doesn't attract much readership. I write for fandoms that don't really read fics, or as is the case in my current fic, multi-fandom crossovers that are going to lose a lot of people just because it has some stuff in the list that they haven't seen. I really don't need this, man, I'm fumbling just fine without bots.

S'just frustrating.