Captain Plum discovers that saying “Not Interested” apparently means “Please Show Me Again.”
Captain Northman Plum — Lifeology.ca · November 2026
Captain Plum has a question for the good people at X.
How many times does a man have to say no?
Not to a romantic proposal. Not to a timeshare salesman. Not to a suspicious gentleman offering cryptocurrency investment advice.
To Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
Plum does not follow either man. He has no desire to follow either man. He finds their public personas profoundly unappealing.
And yet X keeps recommending them.
Elon Musk.
Bill Gates.
Elon Musk again.
Perhaps Bill Gates has something to say.
Perhaps Elon Musk has posted a photograph of himself looking important.
Would Plum like to follow?
No.
How about now?
Still no.
Tomorrow?
Jesus Christ, no.
The Billionaire Recommendation Service
Plum had understood social media to be a place where people could choose whom they wanted to hear from.
Apparently, that was naive.
X seems to have developed an extraordinary fascination with the possibility that Captain Northman Plum might someday wake up and decide that what his life has been missing is a steady stream of billionaire opinions.
Never mind the hundreds of times he has declined.
The algorithm remains optimistic.
There is something almost touching about its persistence.
Like a golden retriever that keeps bringing you a dead squirrel despite your repeated explanations that you do not want the bloody squirrel.
Except the squirrel owns a technology company.
How Much Does Importance Cost?
Plum has begun wondering whether billionaires receive some special promotional treatment from the internet.
He does not know whether Musk or Gates pays to appear in his recommendations. There is no evidence that either man has purchased these particular appearances.
And Musk, of course, already owns X.
But the larger question remains delicious.
How much does it cost to make an algorithm repeatedly insist that somebody matters?
Is there a premium package?
For $10,000, your face appears in someone’s feed.
For $100,000, you appear every day.
For $1 million, the algorithm ignores the user’s repeated objections.
And for $10 million, the system personally visits the user’s house and asks whether he has considered following Bill Gates.
Perhaps there’s a special billionaire service.
Congratulations! You’ve purchased the Platinum Relevance Package. You are now interesting to 40 million people who have specifically requested that you leave them alone.
Buying Attention Is Not Earning Interest
Plum does not object to successful people expressing opinions.
They are entitled to speak.
He is equally entitled not to listen.
The difficulty arises when the machinery of communication appears unable to distinguish between someone’s actual interests and the platform’s determination to manufacture them.
Plum enjoys medicine, music, philosophy, science fiction, comedy, animals, and the great mystery of consciousness.
He has built an entire imaginary universe around Order, Truth and Love.
Surely the recommendation system could find someone discussing those subjects.
A philosopher.
A musician.
A physician.
A particularly articulate crow.
But no.
Here’s Elon Musk again.
Perhaps this time Plum will recognize the extraordinary privilege of hearing another billionaire explain civilization.
The Vitan Lesson: Attention Is Not Respect
Vitalogy teaches that human attention is valuable.
A person’s mind is not an advertising billboard waiting to be rented.
Order means a recommendation system should understand and respect the preferences of the person using it.
Truth means distinguishing genuine interest from manufactured visibility.
Love means respecting a person’s freedom to decline.
This is not terribly complicated.
If someone says, “I am not interested,” a well-designed system ought to consider the possibility that the person is, in fact, not interested.
It should not interpret rejection as the beginning of a long and exciting courtship.
There is also a more profound distinction.
Wealth can purchase advertising.
Ownership can provide distribution.
Algorithms can generate impressions.
But none of these things necessarily produces admiration, trust or respect.
A billionaire may have a million followers and still be profoundly uninteresting to the man trying to enjoy his morning coffee.
The Captain’s Final Request
Plum would like to propose a revolutionary new feature for social media.
A button labelled:
NO, I REALLY PLOPSTANKING MEAN IT.
Press it once and the platform remembers.
No complicated settings.
No mysterious recommendation preferences.
No repeated suggestions.
Just a machine that accepts an answer.
If artificial intelligence is supposedly approaching superhuman reasoning, perhaps it could begin by learning the meaning of the word no.
Until then, Plum will continue declining the invitations.
And X will presumably continue wondering whether today is finally the day he discovers that Elon Musk exists.
He knows.
Everybody knows.
That’s rather the problem.
Order. Truth. Love.
And for the love of Amora, stop recommending the bloody billionaires.
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