Welcome to Yabot the Robot

Hi, I’m Dan Gray. I’m a writer, interested in books, music, film, technology, and philosophy.

I like to write stories about my life: my thoughts, my anxiety, my curiosity. I also write reviews of books I’ve read, films I’ve seen, and music I’ve heard.

I post a couple times a week on Yabot, and most of the pieces are longer and more dense than conventional blog posts.

I think that ordinary experience is compelling when it’s conveyed in a compelling way, and I’m opposed to the simplification of language and the sporadic attention that blogs typically encourage; those opinions are reflected in what I write.

Get in touch with me by e-mail if you have any comments or questions, and subscribe to the RSS feed if you want to get all of my posts automatically.

Thanks for reading.

–Dan

Yabot the Robot: A Creation Story

The name Yabot the Robot came to be because I had a transparent bookmark in middle school that said TODAY on it.

If you looked through the bookmark from the back, it vaguely looked like YADOT. I had also been drawing a robotic character over and over again in all of my class notes around that time. The concurrence of these two events led to YABOT the Robot, who was a character in a very strange inner monologue that I unwisely decided to publish on the internet.

No one really read that blog, except for a girl who had a crush on me and a preacher from Tennessee, who commented on most of my posts, which somehow never struck me as strange.

I have started and stopped blogging a number of times, usually out of a fear that what I’m writing isn’t of value to anyone but myself. Most useful internet sites make reference to real world products or services, and most personal material is banal.

That said, I think there’s room for interesting, long-form, personal content on the internet, and that’s what I strive to write.

What I write here

I write long, personal pieces.

There are three kinds of posts on this blog: stories, reviews, and articles.

• My stories are taken from my everyday experience, and are usually a mixture of overheard conversation and my own commentary. This is the most common kind of post.
• The reviews I post are unconventional: no scores, no plot summary, no criticism. My reviews are simple recommendations, not detailed overviews. I write them in this way because I think there’s something very magnificent about experiencing something fresh and unknown.
• Articles are my responses to something I read or encounter. They are generally more academic than stories, but nonetheless contain narrative elements.

I appreciate anyone who reads a post all the way through, and even moreso anyone who wants to discuss something I’ve written.

I know there is a growing sense that words like efficiency and consumption define how we ought to engage internet content, but I’m still fond of patience and reading, and I think there’s real value to struggling with a text and finishing it before being carried off by an endless trail of hyperlinks.

All of my posts can be found in the archive, and the very best posts are compiled as well.

Say hello

I’d love to know what you think of the blog, so please go to the Contact page and send me an e-mail.

Thanks for being here.