[Music for this post: Ben Harper’s Fight for Your Mind; and Billy Bragg & Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue]
[Beer for this post: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale]
Stat Counter
So, to get right to the point, a little over a month ago I added a stat counter to this blog—you may have noticed the little “StatCounter.com” icon at the very bottom of each page (but I’d be surprised). Anne has had one up on her blog for a while, but I had been avoiding adding one, that is until something happened that made me decide I really needed it.
I was avoiding it mostly because I didn’t (and still don’t, for the most part, really) want to know how many page hits I was getting and where my readers were coming from. See, I assumed my only readers were probably my dad, Anne, and a handful of my friends, but I also harbored a very small, secret hope that maybe I was getting a few more hits from other friends and perhaps even the occasional stranger. What was important, and what I didn’t want crushed by the information from a stat counter, was that these were assumptions that I was happy to make and did not want tested. My fear was that if I installed a stat counter I’d learn that no one was reading this, that the five or so people I thought cared enough to check it out occasionally actually didn’t, and also that my little hope of the occasional extra was foolish. There are a lot of websites out there, a lot of blogs, and to assume that people would take the time to read my ramblings, most of which are relatively personal and not specifically designed to be of wider interest, requires a certain amount of arrogance that I guess I have but don’t trust and am not comfortable with.
But I decided to add the tool after Anne told me that someone from the federal courts in D.C. had come to her blog through mine. This was shortly after I had applied for a clerkship with a federal judge in D.C., one who interviewed me in 2008 and who I’d love to work for. [n.1] Now, this reader (or viewer, at least) could have been anyone, it could’ve been a coincidence, but if I had to guess I’d say it wasn’t. To get to my blog and then follow one of my links to Anne’s would require someone who was interested enough about me and my wife to bother with that. It could’ve been a mutual friend, but we couldn’t think of anyone we know who is currently in the D.C. federal court system. If I had to bet, I’d say it was either the Judge or (much more likely) one of her clerks. So, I decided to add the stat counter to see if this person came back to my blog.
What the stat counter tells me, if I go look at it: (1) number of hits in the current day, the previous day, the current month, and “total”; (2) the city, ISP, and IP address of each visitor; (3) how each visitor got there (a link from somewhere else, a Google search, et cetera); and (4) a bunch of other stuff that I don’t really ever look at. So, for example, if my dad views the blog today, and I go look at my recent activity, I’ll see that on April 29 someone in Montebello, California, using the network at Teac America, visited my blog by searching for “Howling with Mirth” using Google (Teac is my dad’s employer).
The information is very interesting. But if you’re reading this and are worried that I’ll figure out who you are and how often you read it, you shouldn’t be too concerned: first, because the information is usually too vague to make anything out of it; and second, because I don’t look at it that closely for the reason I talked about up above (I just don’t want to know). But when in scanning the thing I see something weird, I take note. Here are some examples of things I’ve discovered:
- I had a visitor from Qatar who viewed my post entitled “Catholic High School Girls in Trouble.” He (I’m confident it was a he) managed to get to it without a “referring link” (he didn’t directly follow a result from a search engine) which is kind of strange.
- I had a visitor from Saudi Arabia who viewed my “Reading the New Yorker with Me…” post and got to it by searching “Play tits” on Google. I blame James Cameron.
- A visitor from Tehran, Iran, got to my blog by searching “hymen break videos” on Google. I guess that’s what I get for writing about Bad Lieutenant.
- And, the most disturbing one by far, a visitor from Frisco, Texas, who got here by searching “pre school little lolitas.” Fucking sick bastard. I write about one of the most beautifully written novels of all time and I get this sort of traffic. If any law enforcement officers from Texas or the FBI are reading this, he (obviously) connected via Grande Communications and his IP address is 72.48.62.230.
Other, less disturbing things I’ve discovered:
- I’ve had visitors from every continent except Antarctica. If anyone knows anyone at a research station down there, please ask them to visit my blog so I can complete my tour of the continents.
- I have semi-regular readers in Australia, Ireland, England, and a few other places. Who knew?
- When Chris at Smart Football linked to my “Ten Books…” post my traffic jumped to about 100 people a day for a few days. Thanks, Chris!
- If you really want to know, and I don’t but I can’t delete it from my mind, my daily average is about 10 people (with spikes occurring during the two days after I post something new), which is more than I would’ve dared to guess.
Thanks for reading, it means a lot to me.
Why I Write this Blog
I don’t write it because I think I’m going to become the male version of Heather Armstrong, a “daddy blogger” who can support a family on blogging revenue. [n.2] I don’t write it because I’m arrogant enough to think lots of people who don’t know me care about what I have to say. This is probably going to sound sappy, or whatever, but I write it because it is good for me. I write this to share.
Those who know me well, particularly my wife and ex-girlfriends, know that communication is far from my strong suit. I’m intensely private about many things and I tend to keep to myself most of what goes on in my head (which has to sound strange coming from someone who writes a pretty personal blog, but it’s true). But for some reason, and I realize I’m not unique here, I can write things I can’t say. I can share things here that I can’t share in another manner. [n.3] Some might think this is an example of what’s wrong with people today, what’s wrong with the Internet, this distanced, impersonal, electronic communication. They’d say that surely a face-to-face chat would be better, and maybe they’re right, I can understand that, but some of this stuff I am simply not going to say otherwise. I can’t share some of the things I’ve shared here in one-on-one conversation. Call it a fault of mine—it probably is—but this is what I’ve got, and I can’t help but think this is better than nothing. And in my defense, sort of: on top of the limitation caused by my usual inability to expose myself in person (heh), I think there is a depth achievable in writing that is hard to match in conversation. But whatever.
I’ve written stuff here that has touched certain people very deeply, made them cry with joy, and I’ve written stuff here that has led to friends sharing important, personal things with me that I am confident they never would’ve shared otherwise. This is not boasting, it’s the truth, and it’s my point.
I write about what interests me, what pisses me off, what I care about, et cetera and so on, because I want to communicate with other human beings. I’m reaching out. I’ve had people tell me that I should be really careful about what I write online, that I should restrict my communication, that I should self-censor. And I am careful, generally (e.g., I removed the Facebook link that displayed my full name on this site), but there’s a part of me that refuses to restrict my communication, that recoils at self-censorship. The point here for me is to share, to open myself to others, and I’ll be damned if I cut that short because I’m worried about what someone who doesn’t even know me will think about it.
Every time I read something or hear someone say that you need to be careful about what you put online, I think, “If someone doesn’t want to give me a job, or whatever, because of what I write here, or my often strange and easily misconstrued Facebook status updates, then fuck them.” [n.4] But I have to admit, when I was faced with that idea more concretely, when it became clear that the Judge I applied to (or one of her clerks) was probably looking at this blog, I thought about what I’d written here and kind of regretted some of it. But I quickly came back to where I was before: if they want to make a hiring decision based on what I’ve written here, without understanding where I’m coming from, my perspective, my slant, my humor, et cetera et cetera et cetera, then screw them. This stuff is for people who care about me, in one way or another.
Note 1: My instinct suggests that second "who" should be "whom," but I figured it would looked forced if I put it there.
Note 2: But I am convinced that there’d be a market for a decent “daddy blog.” The problem is that it would require a much tighter focus on fatherhood, and I want to write about what I want to write about without being concerned about staying on topic.
Note 3: No, writing letters or private emails to the people I want to share particular stuff with is not a viable alternative for me. Trust me.
Note 4: But I should note that I am not one of those people that has many hundreds of pictures, many of which involve bodyshots and/or extreme drunkenness, of me on Facebook. Or anything of the sort.
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