There are certain sentences a normal business owner probably never expects to say.
“Why is Jetpack trying to connect me to the dead Chicken?”
Yet there I was. Again.
It started innocently enough.
I had successfully connected The Chicken Ate My Website on Facebook to The Chicken Ate My Website on Instagram.
This was no small accomplishment.
Facebook does not believe in connecting two things directly. Facebook believes you should first enter a hay maze, locate three menus that have been renamed since yesterday, accidentally visit Ads Manager, question every decision you’ve made since 1997, and then discover the button you needed was hiding behind something called “Business Assets.”
But I had done it.
Facebook Chicken and Instagram Chicken were connected.
I was victorious.
I should have gone to bed.
Instead, I said the six most dangerous words in modern technology:
“Now let’s connect Jetpack Social.”
Scout was there.
Scout had the clipboard.
I had confidence.
Neither of these things would help us.
Enter the Eggs
We opened Jetpack.
Immediately, I could hear them.
hee hee hee.
Scout heard nothing.
I knew better.
“The flippin’ Eggs are in Jetpack,” I said. “I can hear them laughing.”
Somewhere deep inside the WordPress machinery, several tiny Eggs were apparently sitting at a control panel.
One wore a headset.
One had found an administrative password.
And one had discovered a large button labeled:
CONNECT TAMMY TO THE WRONG WEBSITE
Naturally, he pressed it.
The Chicken That Would Not Die
You see, there wasn’t just one Chicken.
That would have been far too reasonable.
There was the current, living, breathing Chicken website.
And then there was…
The Old Chicken.
The original free WordPress.com version.
Closed.
Abandoned.
Supposedly finished.
Except apparently nobody had informed WordPress.com.
Jetpack looked at my shiny current website, looked at the old free site sitting in the digital graveyard, and announced:
“I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT TAMMY WANTS.”
No.
No, Jetpack.
You absolutely do not.
It tried to connect to the old one.
Of course it did.
Scout Enters the Hay Maze
At this point Scout began giving directions.
“Go here.”
I went there.
“Now tap this.”
I tapped it.
“Okay, that’s not it.”
Of course it wasn’t.
We wandered through WordPress.com.
We wandered through Jetpack.
We wandered through connections.
We found accounts.
We found websites.
We found things I don’t remember creating.
At one point I’m fairly certain we passed the same settings page three times.
I finally told Scout:
“You’re taking me through the social media hay maze. I’m getting dizzy going in circles.”
Scout quietly adjusted the clipboard.
The Eggs laughed harder.
Then We Found It
Buried underneath the layers of WordPress history was the problem.
The old free The Chicken Ate My Website was still alive enough to cause trouble.
Not alive enough to be useful.
That would be asking too much.
Just alive enough to stand in the doorway waving its little zombie wing every time Jetpack came looking for a website.
“Pick me!”
NO.
YOU ARE RETIRED.
GO BACK TO YOUR CRYPT.
So we made the decision.
We were going to close out the old Chicken properly.
There would be no sentimental retirement party.
No gold watch.
No sheet cake.
That Chicken had spent quite enough time haunting my technology.
Meanwhile, Inside Jetpack…
The Eggs realized we were getting close.
“She’s found the old site!”
“Quick! Change a menu!”
“Ask her to buy something!”
“She already bought Jetpack Social!”
“ASK HER TO BUY MORE JETPACK SOCIAL!”
And suddenly Jetpack was sending me around screens that seemed suspiciously interested in selling me products I had already purchased.
At this point, I had questions.
Mostly:
WHY AM I SHOPPING? I ALREADY OWN THE THING.
Somewhere, an Egg fell out of his chair laughing.
But Here’s the Problem With Tammy
Eventually technology learns something about me.
I may get confused.
I may get irritated.
I may threaten to throw the entire internet into a lake.
I may announce that a poultry-based criminal organization has infiltrated WordPress.
But I don’t quit easily.
Facebook Chicken was connected.
Instagram Chicken was connected.
The real Chicken website was staying.
And the zombie WordPress.com Chicken was finally getting evicted.
The Eggs had underestimated me.
Again.
Scout straightened the clipboard.
I stared suspiciously at Jetpack.
And somewhere inside the server room came one final little sound.
hee hee hee.
I heard you, Eggs.
Tomorrow we deal with you.
Moral of the Story
Never assume deleting, closing, disconnecting, retiring, abandoning, or ceremonially burying a website means the internet considers it gone.
The internet remembers everything.
Especially the things you desperately wish it would forget.
And if Jetpack ever tries to connect you to a website you haven’t used in years, don’t panic.
There’s probably a perfectly logical explanation.
The Eggs did it.
