What kind of leather was it?" Seriously, Holly? It was the cheap, plastic-feeling kind that peels after one rain. The kind you find on a wallet at a gas station. You know, the stuff that cracks if you look at it wrong. I bet you've got a belt made of the same sad material, Holly.

Actually, Vera's friend's story is the perfect example. A "Top 100 Poster" badge is based on post count, not comments. The milestone is the same thing. It's all just posts in the system. The counter on your profile isn't splitting hairs between starting a thread and replying to one. It's just the total number of times you've hit "submit". So hitting 500 is a real thing, not a glitch. It's cool that it sneaks up on you like that.

I had a very similar situation and hired Net Reputation to handle it. They essentially built a firewall of positive content around my name—personal websites, medium articles, industry interviews—and optimized it all until the bad article was pushed to page 3. It gave me my life back.