Leaderboard

So you have probably noticed I don't just slap any ole thing up in the forum. I recently searched for my name +journalist, and there I was splashed at the top of the Google results for my writing on aalbc. Although I have my own website, when Muckrack, the journalism aggregation website, found me -Mel Hopkins's Profile | Medium, Substack, Ebony Journalist | Muck Rack, again, it was all my popular comments from AALBC. When I write book reviews on AALBC, they become AALBC famous on the net. I've been thinking about writing excerpts from the time I flew the friendly skies - and if I were most folks, I'd probably post on Patreon and Substack - but I'm not, I'm going to post about my crazy escapades on AALBC and maybe Patreon too - but I betcha the most views will come from AALBC. Thank you, @Troy In short, Claude AI had a lot to say about AALBC. But here's a snippet: "In other words, AALBC's forum is functioning as a consensus-building document for who you are as a writer and thinker — and AI search is now reading that document alongside Google." Aside: @Pioneer1 and @ProfD y'all were genius to remain anonymous 💓

I've heard mixed reviews. Folks enjoyed the opening ceremony & really dig the library. Some of the residents aren't so happy feeling like the library is an eyesore & will increase their property taxes. Either way, the library is there to stay. Folks may as well pull up & enjoy the significance of it. If/when I'm back in Chi-town, the Obama presidential library will definitely be on my list of places to visit.😎

Thank you! And yes this is a proverbial coffee shop! What's the name of it? " "Black and Hot Brew"? Oh wait! Now, I need to steal my name! Leave it to Cynique to come up with a theme! @aka Contrarian You make AI look good! I can see that just from your conversation here. Same with Troy, which is why I'm surprised. Troy is wealth of knowledge and has great stories too! Pioneer, Cheydove, Cynique Harry...the list goes on I don't think any of us would spend our time together looking at screens. 😊🥳

Sista @Mel Hopkins it's always great to have your presence in the proverbial coffeeshop. @aka Contrarian (Cynique) has been on an AI tear lately. She's jet-setting through pics.🤣😎

I’m talking about women across the board in general all ages including our age but as they get older than us not so much. I remember years ago I was out to dinner with a group of people in Brooklyn next to me was a writer who is very well known now and her face was buried in her phone and I asked what she was doing. She said she was on Twitter. I asked her what that was and she explained you you just read the posts when you’re bored and need something to do; I was like “you mean as in right now.” she understood what I was saying and put her phone away. Today, if I’m with someone one-on-one, I will wave my hand between their face and the screen if I think they’re devoting too much time to it rather than our conversation. Younger women tend to be in their screen while watching TV. I was at a comedy show recently, and the person was in their screen during a comedy show. I just never seen guys do this. It’s always women. Now, of course, I’m not saying all women do this and I’m not saying guys who never do it. I’m just saying that the vast majority of the times I’m observing it it’s women not men. Well, you have that animal, magnetism, women, love, and men envy.

There is no way a woman hanging out with me would have time to be scrolling & watching videos on her phone. She would be too busy talking to &/or listening to me.😁 Admittedly, I don't like younger women so that probably helps too. If a seasoned woman exhibited that type of behavior...she wouldn't be a passenger in my truck.🤣😎

2010 -- Wow! Another thing I noticed as I get older, besides loosing someone every five minutes ☹️ is that my perception of time has really sped up! It is hard to believe 2026 is already half over!

Yep! "Claude" mentioned the age of the site and the fact that AALBC has something like 200,000 VISITORS per month gives it incredible status Wait let me just quote Claude Brotha @ProfD I think it could be age - I've been posting here since 2010 😉

I had not considered there may be gender component to doing this. I’ve known so many women, over so many years that post so much personal information on social, that I have long since given up even commenting about the activity to them. That behavior will not change anytime soon, as social media creates all types of incentives for people to share as much as possible about themselves. It’s one of the reasons I deleted my original Facebook account. But going back to the point of this conversation 🙂 I’ve considered the fact that something that I, or someone else, has written here could be taken out of context and come back to bite me in the real worl. I’m not anonymous, because it takes some effort to do it, and I’m too lazy to maintain anonymity. @Mel Hopkins I might stop short of the word “love.” but if you consider the fact that AALBC.com is almost 30 years old with the boatload of content and there’s increasingly less competition from other website, AALBC really should rank high in search be referenced by aggregators. But I still feel that Google search has done more harm to the web than it has to benefit it. I think AI will do even more harm so much more that it poses and existential threat to the WWW we know today. I’m not confident what we get in return will be better than what we have today.

Well sista @Mel Hopkins ...you must be a better writer or more substantive than myself. I just sit in this proverbial AALBC armchair giving my opinions about everything. 🤣😎