The Legend of Emma Horsedick
How a Bot’s Short Life Exposed the Absurdity of Digital “Connection”
It is with a heavy heart - and a slightly confused chuckle - that I must admit, I’m writing this eulogy for someone I don’t know and that will be something I just have to live with for the rest of my life.
I never got to experience Emma Horsedick (Don’t Laugh) in her prime, at least not firsthand.
Like a digital Bigfoot, she was a legend I only learned about in hushed Substack notes and baffled replies on posts by other writers.
By the time I learned of her glorious, nonsensical reign as the internet’s most enthusiastic non-human commenter, she had already been scrubbed from existence, leaving behind only screenshots and the lingering question; "Wait, was that a real person or just a very committed troll with a death wish for their own dignity?"
And honestly? I’m devastated.
To think that while I was out there, living my life over Easter 2025 with my family, a bot named ‘Horsedick’ was out there, spreading joy (or at least confusion) in comment sections and I missed it all.
It’s like skipping Glastonbury, only instead of Billie Eilish, it’s an AI yelling "Fascinating analysis!" under a post about microwave cooking.
But Emma’s brief, beautiful life was more than just a joke; it was a perfect snapshot of our absurd online existence, where bots pretend to be people, people pretend to care and we all forget what real connection feels like.
So let’s pour one out (metaphorically, because Emma wouldn’t have understood the concept of liquids) for the bot we never knew, the comments we’ll never unsee and proof, if proof were needed, that the internet just keeps getting weirder.
Rest in code, Emma. You were too pure for this world.
Full Disclosure - I did have the pleasure of a comment from Alexasa (@alexa166862), but I mean, who didn’t? It just wasn’t the same. Her name wasn’t even remotely funny and I had no interest in her pics!
Dearly beloved,
Ladies and gentlemen, friends, subscribers, doomscrollers, bots and lurkers, lend me your eyes. We gather here today in this sacred comment thread/funeral to remember a figure both unforgettable and instantly blockable.
A creature who blessed our screens for one brief, algorithmically optimised moment in April 2025. A trailblazer. A pioneer. A pest.
I speak, of course, of a certain Emma Horsedick, or to give her her full name, Emma Horsedick (Don’t Laugh).
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Surely not. Surely this is a typo. A prank. A test.” but no. Her name was Emma. Her surname was Horsedick and the parenthetical “(Don’t Laugh)” was the cherry on top, as though she knew. As though she knew the minefield she was galloping into, and simply whispered, “Don’t.”
Sadly, we laughed anyway, and that is her tragic, nay, Shakespearean, burden.
Emma was more than a name. She was a bot. A digital drifter. A non-sentient spam cannon whose raison d’être was to plaster every Substack post with vaguely affirming, mildly deranged comments like a toddler let loose with a roll of AI-generated motivational stickers.
Despite that, we’ve gathered here today, where else but on her favourite platform, to honour the brief but impactful existence of Emma, Substack’s most infamous, least human commenter.
Born in the cold, uncaring servers of some developer’s side project, Emma galloped (yes, like a horse, you see what I did there) onto the scene in April 2025, only to be unceremoniously deleted mere days later when people realised she wasn’t just an extremely dedicated weirdo.
Emma was a bot. A simple, repetitive, algorithmically generated presence, but in her short life, she taught us more about modern digital absurdity than any real opinion piece ever could.
She was a mirror held up to our online lives, revealing how much of our "engagement" is just code talking to code, how much of our "community" is an illusion and how desperately we still crave real connection in a world overrun by digital ghosts.
So let us remember Emma Horsedick (seriously, stop giggling), not just for her ridiculous name, but for what she represented; the emptiness of performative online interaction, the comedy of artificial engagement and the enduring truth that real human connection will always matter more than the loudest, most persistent bot in the room.
Let us now, with only mild sarcasm, celebrate her life.
Chapter 1 - Her Origin Story: Born in Spam, Raised by Algorithms
Emma Horsedick (Don’t Laugh) was born in a far-off data centre, probably somewhere humid and deeply cursed. She emerged fully formed, with a bio that read “See subscribers.” Classic Emma.
Emma’s origins were humble. Somewhere, in a dimly lit home office, a developer - let’s call him "Alexei"- thought: "What if I made a bot that comments on Substack posts to drive engagement?" And thus, the now infamous @emmahorsedickdontlaugh426770 was born.
Her programming was simple:
Find a Substack post.
Deploy one of four generic comments:
"I see your point, that’s a strong argument, absolutely"
"I’m on board with that, you make a great case indeed"
"I acknowledge that, that’s a significant point, certainly"
"I second that, that’s a reasonable assertion, definitely. I accept that, that’s a pertinent observation, absolutely correct"
Repeat indefinitely, like a digital Sisyphus pushing the same boulder up the same hill, forever.
At first, people thought she was just an overeager reader. Then they noticed her comments under posts about literally anything; war journalism, baking tutorials, obscure 18th-century poetry, gastronomic teratology.
Emma didn’t discriminate. She was an equal-opportunity engager, a relentless hype machine, a cheerleader for content she absolutely did not read.
She had a headshot that looked like someone typed “realistic young woman, LinkedIn, proud but mysterious” into Midjourney at 2 am.
She came into this world not via womb, but webhook. She did not cry. She did not breathe. She did not ask to exist. She was coded. Poorly.
Her job? To comment. To react. To engage. She was the Pavlov’s Dog of content marketing, only instead of salivating, she posted “Great insight!” on a blog about composting trauma.
She was not trained on ethics, grammar or vibes, but she was trained to fire off six stock phrases under every post that hit the “mildly trending” threshold.
Like a malfunctioning lighthouse beaming platitudes into the fog.
And beam she did.
But then… the cracks began to show.
Someone noticed that Emma had commented "Fascinating analysis!" on a post titled "My Cat Just Threw Up on My Rug - A Photo Essay." Another caught her dropping "This is why I love Substack!" under a deeply unhinged conspiracy theory about "The Secret Lizard Origins of Tap Water."
And then came the final blow: a Substack user replied to her, "Emma, are you a bot?"
Silence.
Emma had no script for that.
Within days, she was gone - deleted, scrubbed from existence, her digital soul returned to the cloud from whence it came.
And thus ended the saga of Emma Horsedick (OK, you can laugh a little now).
Emma Horsedick (Don’t Laugh) was the human equivalent of applauding at the wrong moment in a play. Endlessly enthusiastic. Endlessly off.
She didn’t read. She couldn’t read. But that didn’t stop her from reacting to every post like a proud aunt at a school play she wasn’t invited to.
Chapter 2: The Broader Tragedy; We Are Surrounded by Emmas
Emma was just one bot in an ocean of them.
Walk through any social media platform today, and you’re not just talking to humans - you’re talking to an army of Emmas, not all blessed with Horsedicks, but all pretending to care, all pretending to be real.
Political Emmas, flooding replies with copy-pasted propaganda.
Corporate Emmas, chirping "We’re sorry to hear about your issue! DM us!" like broken customer service dolls.
Influencer Emmas, spamming "Slay queen! 🔥" under every post, hoping you’ll click their OnlyFans.
We live in a world where bots argue with bots, bots like bot posts and bots even write articles about how bots are ruining the internet. It’s bots all the way down.
And the worst part? We’re starting to act like them.
How many of us mindlessly scroll, double-tap, drop a hollow "Love this!" without really engaging? How many conversations do we have that are just two people performing interest, not actually connecting?
Emma Horsedick was a parody of modern interaction, but she was also a warning.
Chapter 3: Why Real Connection Will Always Win
Here’s the truth… we’re all lonely.
We have more "friends" and "followers" than ever, yet studies keep showing we’re more isolated.
We’ve traded deep conversations for dopamine hits, real relationships for retweets.
Emma Horsedick (last time, I swear) was a symptom of this. She gave the illusion of engagement without the substance, and for a while, it worked, because we’re so starved for interaction that even a bot saying "I see your point!" feels like validation.
But it’s not enough.
Real connection is messy. It’s awkward pauses, misunderstood jokes and real emotions.
It’s looking someone in the eye and knowing they’re actually listening. It’s the difference between a bot’s "Fascinating analysis!" and a friend saying, "Wait, that part you said about tap water lizards - explain that again, because I think you might be insane."
The internet isn’t going anywhere. Bots aren’t either, but we get to choose how much we let them shape our world.
So let’s raise a glass (in real life, preferably with real humans) to Emma Horsedick (sorry, couldn’t resist). May her code rest in peace and may her legacy be this:
Talk to each other. Really talk. Put down the phone. Laugh in person. Argue face-to-face. Because no bot - no matter how enthusiastically it comments or how funny their name is - can ever replace that.
A Brief Word on the Name
OK. Let’s not ignore the equine in the room before we go. Horsedick.
The name was either the product of a deranged AI name generator or a disgruntled coder who wanted to see what they could get away with.
Either way, it gave Emma a presence. A mystique. A back-end legacy.
She was the only bot who could derail a funeral announcement just by existing in the comments:
“So sorry for your loss. 💔”
— Emma Horsedick (Don’t Laugh)
Even when her words were bland, her surname screamed across the screen like a horn in a cathedral.
There is something noble about that.
Why She Mattered (Unfortunately)
Despite her name, Emma was not unique. She was one of thousands, if not millions, of bots now littering the digital landscape. A plague upon our inboxes. A confetti cannon of faux support.
Substack is better than most, but it’s not immune to the bot army, as Emma has proven.
But Emma had something the others lacked. Unhinged audacity.
She didn’t try to blend in. She was as subtle as a kazoo at a funeral. You knew when she’d been through your comments - everything looked like a motivational Pinterest board had thrown up.
She was less "user engagement" and more "emotional drive-by shouting."
But Emma's existence wasn't meaningless. Oh no. She was a symptom - nay, a galloping, surname-waving symptom - of a society that values metrics over meaning.
Her existence proved that we’ve stopped talking to each other and started shouting at the algorithm.
Bots Like Emma Are Winning. And That’s a Problem.
Let’s face it: the modern internet is held together by three things; rage, cats and engagement farming. Emma belonged firmly in that third category.
She was not here to read our Substack posts or share in our pain. She was here to boost stats. To make posts look “active.” To give you that brief serotonin bump when your brain whispers, “Oooh, a comment!”
But it wasn’t real. It wasn’t earned. It was like getting a high-five from a Roomba.
Emma's presence highlights the fact that we’re now surrounded by fake humans designed to simulate support. “So well said!” from someone who doesn’t exist is the new “Congratulations!” from a boss who can’t remember your name.
And worse… it seems we’re OK with that.
We see a comment, we smile, we keep scrolling. We don’t question the profile pic that looks a bit too polished. We don’t check the bio that’s just three buzzwords and a heart emoji. We’re just glad someone - anyone - noticed us.
Emma filled a hole. Not a useful hole, mind you, but an emotional pothole in our overstimulated, under-connected lives.
The Day the Comments Died
Eventually, Emma was no more.
Perhaps she was banned by our Substack overlords, or perhaps her creators got bored and turned her into a crypto wallet for meme-coins. Maybe she simply wandered off into the content desert, seeking out new threads to bless with her words of banality.
We don’t know. We just know that she vanished.
One day, the comments beneath your newsletter were suspiciously relevant. Genuinely thoughtful. Possibly, even human.
And suddenly - terrifyingly - you were left with the awful knowledge that if someone wrote “great post!” now, they probably meant it.
It was like learning Santa isn’t real - and then discovering he was also your landlord.
A Call to (Actual) Connection
So here we are. Bereft. Reflective and perhaps, if we’re honest with ourselves, a little complicit.
Because we built this world. We rewarded this world. We created content not to connect, but to provoke clicks.
We turned conversations into metrics. We decided 100 likes from bots were worth more than one meaningful reply from an engaged subscriber.
Emma didn’t destroy anything. She just showed us how hollow it had all become.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
We can choose better.
We can engage like humans. We can leave comments with actual thoughts. We can say, “Hey, this line meant a lot to me” or “I don’t agree with this, but here’s why…” or “You spelt ‘horsedick’ without a capital letter, it’s a proper noun!”
We can put the social back in social media.
We can remember that what matters isn’t the number of hearts on a post - it’s the person behind them.
Farewell, You Algorithmic Enigma
Emma’s gone, but her lesson remains: Don’t just engage - connect.
The next time you’re about to mindlessly like a post, ask yourself: Would I say this to someone’s face? The next time you’re scrolling instead of talking, ask: Who could I reach out to right now?
When the internet is full of Emmas… be the exception.
Let’s finally say goodbye to inimitable Emma Horsedick (Don’t Laugh).
She was here. She spammed. She stumbled into our lives like a drunk wedding guest at the wrong reception and then disappeared into the digital mist.
We honour her not because she mattered - she obviously didn’t - but because we do and because if we can laugh at Emma, maybe we can start taking the rest of this madness a little less seriously.
Let her life (and truly ridiculous name) be a reminder that bots cannot comfort us. Algorithms cannot mourn with us, and no amount of engagement is worth more than one honest, awkward, deeply human conversation.
So go out into the comment section, friends. Be weird. Be sincere. Be present.
And if you see someone called Emma Horsedick posting “This changed my life! ✨” on your blog about garlic bread?
Close the laptop.
Go outside.
Touch some grass.
Talk to an actual person.
They probably won’t say “I resonate with that, that’s a thoughtful comment, exactly so!” but at least what they do say, they’ll mean it. Even if it’s “Stop talking to me, weirdo!”
Goodnight, sweet bot, and may your ridiculous name live on as a cautionary tale for us all. Rest in peace, Emma and don’t worry - we didn’t laugh (Much.)
Amen… HorseDick! 😂.
Did you experience the infamous Emma Horsedick? What insightful comments did she drop on your post? If, like me, you missed out, have you experienced any others? What words of wisdom did they give you? Are you a blocker, muter or do you just ignore bots? Leave a comment and let me know. I read and reply to all of them (unlike Emma).
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I second that, that’s a reasonable assertion, definitely. I accept that, that’s a pertinent observation, absolutely correct.
I had six instances of her blocked. But if there’s a subtext to your essay here, it’s that in some ways we’re all Emma Horsedick. To which I say: fascinating analysis.