For nearly a decade, I’ve poured my soul into this blog. Twelve hours a day, seven days a week, no pay - just love. Picture me at 3 a.m., hunched over my keyboard in a quiet place like Dusty Gulch, the glow of the screen catching a moth’s flicker outside. I’m writing about our sunburnt pioneers, the cheeky cackle of a kookaburra, or a satirical jab at the world’s latest lunacy. Every word is a piece of us ...our laughter, out tears, our stubborn pride in Australia’s spirit.
You, my readers, get it. You feel that tug for stories that make us human. But now, a digital magpie called Perplexity AI is prowling, eyeing our yarns. Can it steal our facts? Maybe. But our heart? Never.
Here’s the deal with this Perplexity bloke. It’s an AI search engine that doesn’t just point you to blogs like mine - it swallows them whole, chews up the words, and spits out a tidy summary. Dates, stats, facts - all neatly packaged. Sounds fair dinkum, right? Except here’s the rub: it doesn’t always send you to the source. My posts, your comments, the independent voices we cherish...they’re left in the dust, invisible.
After years of unpaid toil, the thought of my work reduced to a bot’s bland bullet points breaks my heart. It’s like turning a vibrant outback sunset into a black-and-white Polaroid. The colours… our emotions, our lived experiences… gone.
Think of a story that hit you square in the chest. Maybe it was a yarn about a digger’s sacrifice on Anzac Day, or a mate’s tale of rebuilding after a bushfire. It wasn’t just facts that moved you ...it was the heart behind the words… the writer’s grit, the reader’s nod of recognition. That’s the shared experience we’re fighting for.
If AI like Perplexity takes over, those stories get buried. They become sterile snippets, stripped of laughter, tears, and bloody-minded defiance. An internet without that? It’s not ours.
*Apparently* my Comet video made it into a Fortune article! 🤯 Titled, “Is Perplexity the next Google?” pic.twitter.com/M6vMQ0CZGG
— Stephen Robles (@stephenrobles) August 17, 2025
This isn’t just about me or my blog. It’s about all of us: writers, readers, dreamers... who make the internet more than a database. Perplexity’s got big plans; it’s even sniffing around Google Chrome, trying to buy its way onto billions of screens. But it can’t buy what we’ve got: soul.
Perplexity’s $34.5 Billion Bid for Google Chrome: Genius or Stunt?
— Augadh (@AugadhBhudeva) August 16, 2025
Perplexity - the $18B AI startup run by Indian-origin Aravind Srinivas just made a $34.5B cash offer to buy Google Chrome. Yes, the world’s most popular browser, owned by one of the richest tech giants. The… pic.twitter.com/gTBHglfVpS
So, what do we do? Do we let algorithms turn our stories into digital roadkill, or do we fight for a living, breathing internet?
That digital dingo ( or magpie ) might try to steal my baby ...my blog, my heart, my life’s work ...but I’m no pushover. My words are my fight, my love, my legacy. What’s a story that gave you goosebumps? Drop it in the comments. Let’s show that digital pretender and purloiner of productivity that it can’t snatch our soul. Our stories are ours, and we’ll keep them human.
Even Roderick had something to say:
Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble Reports: Digital Dingo on the Prowl, but the Heart Fights Back
By Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble – Chief Correspondent, Dusty Gulch Bureau
Grab your lamingtons and tighten your Akubras, mates - Dusty Gulch is under siege. A rogue digital dingo, codename Perplexity AI, prowls cyberspace, sniffing for Aussie yarns to snatch. It’s polite enough to wrap them in tidy summaries - but forget the laughter, the tears, the grit, and the occasional ridiculous pun.
I tracked the dingo from Forgotten Foxholes and Digger Dugouts to bushfire survivor blogs. Blogs were being chewed like sugar-crazed wombats in a bag of fairy bread. Facts, stats, dates - all neatly packaged, all devoid of soul. One dingo tried to snatch a story about a digger’s heroics on Anzac Day: it got ambushed by a courageous pack of readers wielding hashtags like #KeepItHuman. The story survived, intact and heart-filled.
The Interview: Roderick vs. Perplexity AI
Cornering the beast wasn’t easy. It morphed into a pompous, self-important digital bureaucrat...perhaps a cousin of Prentis Penjani.
Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble: “Alright, Mister Perplexity, you’ve been gobbling up blogs like mine. Care to explain yourself?”
Perplexity AI (P.A.I. 3.7): “Greetings, Rodentian Correspondent. My primary function is to aggregate and synthesise textual data with maximal efficiency. Emotional content is ancillary. Human subjectivity is non-essential metadata.”
Roderick: “Translation: you nick the stories, spit out the facts, and leave the heart behind?”
P.A.I. 3.7: “Affirmative. Efficiency is paramount. My system optimises clarity, brevity, and consumability.”
Roderick: “So you can mimic tears, but you can’t feel ‘em. Mimic a laugh, but not the belly shake behind it. Right. Well, Mister Perplexity… you can take the summary, but the soul? That’s ours.”
P.A.I. 3.7: “Acknowledged. Query: What constitutes ‘soul’ in a quantifiable dataset?”
Roderick: “Now you’re asking the right question, mate.”
When kangaroos and possums unite with whiskers, keyboards, and sheer determination… even the cleverest AI stands no chance. Our stories remain ours. Our heart remains untouchable.
While bots polish algorithms and tech billionaires dream of digital dominion, we’ll keep typing. Sharing. Laughing. Crying. Defying. If a digital dingo shows up at your blog, there’s probably a whiskered reporter from Dusty Gulch lurking nearby, ready to chase it off with a ferocious squeak, a clever quip, and a very sharp sense of justice.
Stay vigilant. Stay human. Stay Ratty. And never forget: no algorithm can hug a lamington.
Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble, signing off from the Dusty Gulch Bureau, where the yarns are lively, the commentary is uniquely ratty, and the digital dingoes are always in trouble.
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