Friday, June 06, 2008

STAT COUNTER FOLLIES...


An anonymous comment on my last post led me back to a rather sad fact:

At least half of the people who come here are looking for something they're not going to find. Biggo over in East Overshoe does keep people coming my way, as do now Jay and Anginae in whatever red state they are in. But most people are here by happenstance or mistake.

There is a large contingent, especially from foreign countries, who get here by searching for "Best Gay Blog," and because I once titled a post "A Best Gay Blog???" when I was listed with BGBs, I now get people looking for the real thing, including recently some poor young slob at the University of California at San Francisco. Then there are the people who are looking for Greasetank [like the guy from Clam Gulch, Alaska--how many people can there be in Clam Gulch, Alaska?] and Gengoroh Tagame: they probably account for another quarter to a third of the traffic.

There are also people who just search the web for images, entering words that I have used to identify images I stole off the web in the first place: "gay-kiss-couple-BW"--"gay" and "kiss" generate a lot of traffic; pictures in general, and these pictures in particular, cast a wide net, apparently wide enough to include the Ho Chi Minh City Post and Telecom Company.

I have a soft spot for the workplace surfers, whether they log on from the California Health And Welfare Agency Data Center, the D.O.D. Network Information Center [our tax dollars hard at work], or just tune in from New Brunswick or Japan or India. My favorites, however, are the people who come back regularly without a referring page, which means they are in fact looking for a "Troll at Sea," and not showing up by some weird coincidence that happens to drag them to my door... it's reassuring to think that some people actually mean to get here.

One thing that puzzled me for the longest time was the amount of traffic generated by one of my astrology posts. Most of you are probably sick to death of Rob Brezsny's vaporings, but as astrology remains one of the things I delight to tease the Goat about, I do keep going back for more. The one they always landed on, though, kept landing on, was the 30th in the series, and I thought:

Why that one in particular?

What was it about that horoscope?

It finally dawned on me that the post's title was "Star Wars XXX" and that the attention all came from people who wanted sci-fi porn, not astrological advice. I'm not sure I want to know too much about people who google "Star Wars" and "XXX"--are they into Han? Leia? Chewy? Jabba the Hutt?--but it amuses me, nevertheless, that there is room for these folks out there on the web, as well. Just for the fun of it, you should try it yourself sometime--you get a lot of "Star Wars," and not much "XXX," at least as far as I can tell, even once you turn off image filtering.

I guess I have kind of a thing for Darth Vader myself, to be perfectly honest, but maybe that's just because I like them very tall, very dark, and very... handsome? Do you suppose he might be a muscle bear under all that nifty black armor...?

I have taken myself out of the running in that particular race by relabeling my post "Star Wars #30." That should spare those innocent triple-X folks some unintended visits to the likes of the Troll...

Hang in there, all, whoever and wherever you may be.
May the XXX force be with you...
C

7 comments:

  1. Oh, honey. That damn XXX force just won't leave me alone.
    Hang in there, Troll. I'll keep sending people your way.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's funny the assumptions you make regarding your audience. I think you are probably wrong on most of what you have surmised. However, I personally do enjoy your blog, even though I am not at all what you stereotypically beleive. I'm comfortably gay, out, masculine and proud. I'll give you that much. Keep blogging! Peace.

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  3. Dear Anonymous:

    We have to stop meeting like this. I am not making assumptions, I am reporting what StatCounter tells me, and those are hard numbers. I know nothing about you and assume less, stereotypically or otherwise.

    What does the combination "I'm comfortably gay, out, masculine and proud. I'll give you that much" mean, anyway?

    Hang around if it fits.
    T@C

    ReplyDelete
  4. And then some of us just keep coming by to check in on Troll's conversion.

    Even if we are clueless sometimes to your metaphors, symbolism, and code references, I keep thinking that if I read you often enough, I may just figure out the mysteries of life.

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  5. Symbolism? Code? Moi?

    For that matter, conversion?

    Just a leaf in the wind, that's all.

    T@C

    ReplyDelete
  6. Possibly, sometime you can privately send me a glossary and a decoder.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Paul:

    I am obviously blind to my own obscurity; if you want a glossary, you will have to tell me to WHAT.

    Cheers
    T@C

    ReplyDelete