Around 15 year ago I remember Tao Lin’s failed attempt to self-promote his existence on Wikipedia. It was a spam-filled marketing blitz that went nowhere for him. He kept trying to add references to himself in all these different articles where it was 1. inappropriate and 2. completely unsourced. He would modify/vandalize something like the George Washington Bridge article and put in a sentence about how Tao Lin’s latest Work was composed while sitting under that bridge. It was so stupid and his edits didnt last 5 minutes. He didn’t seem to understand how Wikipedia worked so he created numerous sock puppets that would talk to one another and try to fake consensus about matters related to Tao Lin’s notability and relevance. Eventually the admins and check-users stepped in and revealed that all the users were coming from the same IP address in New York City.
Then Tao Lin himself came in to argue his case directly — except he verified himself to the admins from that same NYC IP address. Oops. It was such an embarrassing disaster. Since then, whenever I see Tao Lin mentioned anywhere I just assume it’s just him talking about himself again.
I don’t think that anyone organically mentions him unless he spams himself first and others comment on how he is boring/no one cares/etc. Part of me thinks that he wrote this scathing review about himself — because no one would plausibly bother writing anything about him otherwise. But that seems far-fetched. The blogger is too coherent to be Tao Lin.
I don’t think that anyone organically mentions him unless he spams himself first and others comment on how he is boring/no one cares/etc. Part of me thinks that he wrote this scathing review about himself — because no one would plausibly bother writing anything about him otherwise. But that seems far-fetched. The blogger is too coherent to be Tao Lin.