Bathroom Monologue: Karen Schindler and Jodi MacArthur want me to write about “Comment Gobblers”

Comment Gobblers are actually the abducted children of Pac-Man. You know Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. Perhaps you even know of Jr. Pac-Man and Baby Pac-Man, but those were unauthorized children, adopted to fill the hole the Pac-Family's lives. Software developers kidnapped the Pac-Brood as soon as they were conceived, before the zygote split and there was just one pixel of Pac-ness.

Stolen from the warm embrace of their yellow parents, the Pac-Brood were raised in harsh environments like Doom and Pit Fall. A Pac-Person’s inability to jump makes Pitfall an emotionally scarring experience. These games left them both callous and with a deep hunger for something. In the absence of little white pellets strewn about a maze, these Pac-Persons could be directed at anything and expected to swallow them.

What did they swallow? Your Comments on various blogs. Your personal information on e-forms. Anything you’ve ever typed and submitted only to be told the server lost it and you’ll have to fill it out again – that was the work of an abused Pac-Person. They buzz through dial-up and T-1 lines, relishing in the bonus stages that crappy Word Verification programs enable. They’re not doing it out of malice to you – they’re just starving for approval, and desperately running from the ghosts of their lost past.