This virtual consciousness is not artificial intelligence. This consciousness exists in the form of a fully operational voting bot that belongs to 
Let me start at the beginning.
A young artist and writer named Laura Lemons killed herself at the beginning of September in 2017. She was an early adopter of the blockchain-based social media site, Steemit. She was also a tortured soul, having endured a childhood filled with abuse. I was Laura’s acquaintance but I didn’t know the full extent of her recent suffering. Along with many others, I will miss her presence. Here is one of Laura’s best works of art:
@lauralemonsLaura wrote about this piece of art:
I feel like I fall in love with every person I draw. I feel as if I am looking deeply into their soul as I draw them.
It makes me sad knowing that her unique perspective and life is gone. She self-published two books on Amazon which you can see here: https://www.amazon.com/Laura-Lemons/e/B01GUKHV0A
Her Sad Girl Adult Coloring Book is particularly poignant, as we can see a lot of the things that led to her suicide in it.
As far as I know, she is the first person to have died in Steemit. I’ve been on the Steemit platform for about a year and a half, and I knew it was just a matter of time before someone died. I really didn’t expect it be Laura, though.
When I first heard news that she had killed herself, I immediately began to search for evidence that contradicted that, as I was still in denial. As the news of her death circulated around Steemit, a user noticed that she had just received an upvote from the
Even though Laura is no longer alive, her bot* is still upvoting people’s posts, which means it’s adding a few cents to each person’s post payout. Her bot has been running non-stop for 15 days after her death…..a literal ghost in the Steem machine. I just checked the Steem blockchain and 36 minutes ago her bot upvoted Jerry Banfield’s latest post. You can see her bot’s activity by visiting her account on the Steem blockchain: https://steemd.com/@lauralemons
I’ve spent time reviewing the people on her upvote bot list, and when I spoke with another Steemian, we both admitted that we didn’t even know Laura used a bot for voting. It’s like we didn’t really know her very well which is a shame.
I met Laura last year and I helped protect her from a psychopathic stalker in the early days of Steemit. She was one of the main reasons we campaigned to get a mute button created. In the early days of Steemit, there was no mute button, no vote slider, no resteem functionality. Everything has been incrementally added, over time, as the community raises concerns and demands new essential features to be created. Remember, Steemit is a bootstrapped social media start-up and is still in beta.
A lot of people on Steemit don’t know Laura is dead because they continue to send her spam messages like this one sent yesterday:
Her bot is also earning a little bit of Steem, and at last check, she earned .40 Steem last week. I also noticed that her account is powering down, and the next Steem payment is set to happen in 5 days. Her account value is $1,400. It’s not clear who, if anyone, will be managing it going forward. If someone does manage it, will they disable her bot? Or will they respect her wishes, and keep it active?
When I found out Laura had killed herself on September 7, 2017 it was the first time I cried in years. My daughter, who is 7 years old has never seen me cry like I did when the news of Laura’s suicide reached me. The no-feel numb vest that I’d been wearing for years had suddenly become unravelled, as I kept picturing in my mind Laura hanging from her own homemade rope. That image would not leave my mind, no matter how hard I tried to erase it. It was on constant replay all night, as I found myself choking repeatedly, as I tried to go to sleep.
That night my little daughter consoled me and fed me many tissues. I think it was maybe the first time she had ever seen my real and true sad feelings. I have been hiding my ever-present sadness within myself ever since she was born. It’s true that I never got over the sting of a relationship betrayal. I’m not the bounce-back type of person, as I tend to take years of introspection in order to slowly build up trust in humans again.
Laura’s death kind of unleashed the stifled emotional tsunami that had been accumulating for almost a decade inside me.
Swirling around inside of me, too, I had flashbacks from many years ago when my father hung himself in our house. He survived his suicide attempt, though, because the belt he used had broken during mid-hang. He’s still alive today, by a miracle, and you would never know he experienced a massive depression in his past. He’s healthy and happy now.
I still can’t believe she’s gone. When I check the Steem blockchain, like I did just now, her fully operational ghost bot is still in there, carrying out her voting wishes, even though her physical self vanished over two weeks ago.
The question I have asked many times:
Is this the kind of “living forever” paradigm that we now find ourselves in? This next bit might sound strange to you, but because Laura’s bot is still actively supporting authors and busy working day and night, I feel like her being is still with us to a certain extent. Her bot continues to act on her voting preferences and it gives me a comforting feeling knowing it can still support people she liked, even though her physical self no longer exists.
While I was pondering the fact that Laura’s ghost is still in the Steem machine, continuing to vote for her preferred authors, I couldn’t help but think about my own looming death.
Should I set up a bot to upvote my daughter’s posts in the event that I die? In this way, I could continue to economically support and sustain her and others and also pass down my stake to her. But what if she finds it disturbing that my ghost bot is voting for her posts? Would she stop my bot if she could? Or would she leave it running, as a matter of respect for the wishes of her dead mother? Sometimes I think I am not ready to answer such morbid questions. As it is right now, I don’t have a bot running. I had my own upvote bot running last year, but I disabled it. I might start one up again though.
There are too many bizarrely futuristic questions that Laura’s suicide and her still active bot are bringing up for me. I have a feeling that Laura’s bot in the Steem blockchain is just the beginning of our inquiries into the future of humans inextricably entwined with automation.
As a parent, wouldn’t you set up a bot to economically support your children into the future when you no longer exist?
Here’s Laura’s Gofundme: https://www.gofundme.com/lovinglauralemons
Vocabulary:
*Upvote bot:
Users in the Steem blockchain are allowed to create their own bots to perform certain actions like voting, flagging and anti-abuse strategies. There are a number of voting bot services that have been created in order to make the process of creating a bot easier for non-programmers. Anyone is free to program a bot for any purpose, as their are currently no restrictions on their creation. However, the Steem community will collectively decide which bots are useful and which ones are not. The bots which are viewed as not useful will be flagged and driven out of the community organically. Some of the best and most useful bots have been programmed to detect plagiarism and spam. 
Personal update: I am having my own mental health issues at the moment. My moods come in two flavors: unicorns or flames. Right now I'm in hell. I'm not searching for any sympathy or advice currently. Most of my problems are self-created or manufactured inside my mind. My hellish moods will change into unicorn farts soon enough. Don't worry. All projects and other things are hold until my mood improves.
