Instant Fame, in a Non-Religious Way
Guy Andrew, over at his weblog Rook's Rant, is beside himself with joy. He reports that after struggling to get what he seems to regard as the paltry total of 39,000 hits, which took five years, suddenly something happened that more than doubled that number, to over 100,000 -- and in less than three days!!
After that initial upsurge of no less than around 6,500 (six thousand five hundred) hits a day, that average has dropped down to between 400 and 500, though to me that is still a simply astounding number. In contrast, over nearly the same period of years, I have not gotten anywhere near his initial 39,000. I don't even have 15,000 yet, though I'm getting close. But even that number is misleading, because a great many of those visits were the results of my returning to correct or to improve something on my posts, sometimes as often as four times. My mind and my fingers often play tricks on me, and to see what has happened it is much easier to enlarge the print on the screen where my post appears than it is on the composition form that Blogger provides.
Blogger is obviously a case of the young doing things only for the young. You see that kind of thing all the time, because the world is dominated by young people with no sense of the definite certainty, barring certain kinds of generally infrequent mishaps, at least in this country, that they will themselves one day reach a stage in which, one by one, their facilities will start slipping. So the tyranny of youth continues, unabated and unstoppable, though I would at least advocate a law that no one above the age of 60 should be allowed to take any part in the design of any labels and literature that have to do with pharmaceuticals.
But I have not yet told you what our good friend, Guy Andrew, did to achieve his current high measure of fame, even though I myself hate being held in suspense. I hide behind being 77 -- a truly excellent number that, by the way, I miss no opportunity to announce.
Some months ago he published a long list of religions in which neither Christians nor atheists believe. The most surprising and enlightening thing about that list was that there are so many recognized religions in which anybody believes. And recently that list found its way into the hands of someone who gave it special attention on the atheist section of what appears to be a huge and popular site that, however, I had never heard of, though the world is full of huge things that I've never heard of. It is called StumbleUpon, and voila! Suddenly hundreds of hits per day for him.
You don't know how glad I am for him, and I only have one question. I didn't notice a similiar upsurge in the comments he gets. I would like to see what all those people think of his thoughts and doings. The cause of that absence must be the truly crappy comment section that he has, which is strange, because he is otherwise constantly improving his site. But to post a comment there, first you have to go through a cumbersome process of registering, which so far I have not yet managed to do. I think this is because his bloggery, Movable Type, is supposed to send an email confirming your registration, but they never do. If that ever becomes possible, I intend to bring this problem to his full attention.
On the other hand, though, I shouldn't doubt that he is well aware of this shortcoming and is glad for it, because he is too busy, and also probably too intolerant and fearful of spam and other nonsense to want to devote any time and energy to answering people.
I, however, find comments entertaining. But on my considerably lower level of things I can afford to.
This demonstrates yet again that total obscurity is not all bad.
After that initial upsurge of no less than around 6,500 (six thousand five hundred) hits a day, that average has dropped down to between 400 and 500, though to me that is still a simply astounding number. In contrast, over nearly the same period of years, I have not gotten anywhere near his initial 39,000. I don't even have 15,000 yet, though I'm getting close. But even that number is misleading, because a great many of those visits were the results of my returning to correct or to improve something on my posts, sometimes as often as four times. My mind and my fingers often play tricks on me, and to see what has happened it is much easier to enlarge the print on the screen where my post appears than it is on the composition form that Blogger provides.
Blogger is obviously a case of the young doing things only for the young. You see that kind of thing all the time, because the world is dominated by young people with no sense of the definite certainty, barring certain kinds of generally infrequent mishaps, at least in this country, that they will themselves one day reach a stage in which, one by one, their facilities will start slipping. So the tyranny of youth continues, unabated and unstoppable, though I would at least advocate a law that no one above the age of 60 should be allowed to take any part in the design of any labels and literature that have to do with pharmaceuticals.
But I have not yet told you what our good friend, Guy Andrew, did to achieve his current high measure of fame, even though I myself hate being held in suspense. I hide behind being 77 -- a truly excellent number that, by the way, I miss no opportunity to announce.
Some months ago he published a long list of religions in which neither Christians nor atheists believe. The most surprising and enlightening thing about that list was that there are so many recognized religions in which anybody believes. And recently that list found its way into the hands of someone who gave it special attention on the atheist section of what appears to be a huge and popular site that, however, I had never heard of, though the world is full of huge things that I've never heard of. It is called StumbleUpon, and voila! Suddenly hundreds of hits per day for him.
You don't know how glad I am for him, and I only have one question. I didn't notice a similiar upsurge in the comments he gets. I would like to see what all those people think of his thoughts and doings. The cause of that absence must be the truly crappy comment section that he has, which is strange, because he is otherwise constantly improving his site. But to post a comment there, first you have to go through a cumbersome process of registering, which so far I have not yet managed to do. I think this is because his bloggery, Movable Type, is supposed to send an email confirming your registration, but they never do. If that ever becomes possible, I intend to bring this problem to his full attention.
On the other hand, though, I shouldn't doubt that he is well aware of this shortcoming and is glad for it, because he is too busy, and also probably too intolerant and fearful of spam and other nonsense to want to devote any time and energy to answering people.
I, however, find comments entertaining. But on my considerably lower level of things I can afford to.
This demonstrates yet again that total obscurity is not all bad.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 8:06 AM
2 Comments:
Hello Carl,
Google has a site for finding out who,where from, and when your hits are. Way more than half are always from robots looking for key words and stuff, but its interesting to see the hits from around the world. Check with Cynthia for links. Hope you are enjoying our "less firewood" days
Tom
Hey, Tom! Thanks!
On the firewood, it may be less for you, given that you are on higher ground, and especially with that fabulous solar collector that you built across the entire top half of the front of your house. But I am still out scrounging for the occasional smaller, dead trees while hoping for the definite end of the present, usually cold days here in this frost pocket. But you're right. Consistent 40's is still much better than consistent 20's and 30's.
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