I added a hit counter to my blog yesterday. A friend I've never met helped me because I'm not much cop with computers, and he is. I wasn't going to tell anyone why I got it, on face value it's pretty obvious why, isn't it? But when I chose it the site I picked it from asked me an odd question: it asked me what I wanted my starting count to be.
I'm rarely shocked but sometimes surprised, especially by odd questions.
The premise behind a hit counter is recognition, or faint praise, or popularity, right? The idea that someone else wants to read your mind and that they're interested in what someone else has to say. I mean I don't care what time of day or night someone visits my blog, after all, like Douglas Adams wrote, "Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so."
I'm not interested in whether you're male or female, not at the moment anyway. I don't need to know your blood group or about your first experience in a submarine or whether you'd buy a red or a blue car or the last time you saw a snake. I don't mind if you've simply stumbled across me - although your gender may be more relevant then. I imagine that the same people might come back to read, or maybe they won't. And maybe they tell someone else about it, or maybe they don't. I know that's what I do. Maybe they, good lord above, bookmark you.
Just imagine.
So the hit counter trundles along, rising steadily like an arithmetic progression where the number of days equals x and the number of hits the previous day equals y and I hope, beyond hope, that the result of this blog's equation is never zzzzz...
I appreciate that articles on/in a blog about the blog itself aren't exactly pivotal in the province of excitement. I'm not daft. But it is content. It's something to fill a space. Something that might make you think, or laugh, or cry, or feel horny, or prompt you to remember something. Because anything can be responsible for anything else. Like word association or Chinese whispers. "We" don't know what a ridiculously high percentage of the brain actually does so I won't blame you if, right now, you're thinking about the fact that you need to take a shower, or eat, or buy toilet rolls when you next go shopping. And that's what you are thinking, right now. Even if you don't need them, you're thinking that you might.
It isn't my job to alleviate boredom, although I know I could try if someone paid me.
I think more people are bored than used to be bored, just like more people complain about things. It's not that anything is getting any worse, it's just that people are more inclined to complain about things. And the world isn't getting any more boring. There are more things to occupy minds in 2006 than there have ever been. So why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why do "people" always tell "me" that they're "bored"?
It might just be semantics or a state of mind, but boredom, to me, is just an easy way out. It's the escape route for those challenged by their potentially unlimited vocabulary. Confuse boredom with apathy or lack of opportunity or the inability to generate options. Just call it something else.
Please.
This blog is a child, a baby, born a matter of days ago. Unlike a baby in that it can speak and move, but like a baby in that it can't really do anything for itself, or recognise its own hands, or understand. This blog doesn't understand. It doesn't know what it wants to be any more than I know what it wants to be, or what I want to be come to that. I just want less than half of the hits to be created by me.
I'm rarely shocked but sometimes surprised, especially by odd questions.
The premise behind a hit counter is recognition, or faint praise, or popularity, right? The idea that someone else wants to read your mind and that they're interested in what someone else has to say. I mean I don't care what time of day or night someone visits my blog, after all, like Douglas Adams wrote, "Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so."
I'm not interested in whether you're male or female, not at the moment anyway. I don't need to know your blood group or about your first experience in a submarine or whether you'd buy a red or a blue car or the last time you saw a snake. I don't mind if you've simply stumbled across me - although your gender may be more relevant then. I imagine that the same people might come back to read, or maybe they won't. And maybe they tell someone else about it, or maybe they don't. I know that's what I do. Maybe they, good lord above, bookmark you.
Just imagine.
So the hit counter trundles along, rising steadily like an arithmetic progression where the number of days equals x and the number of hits the previous day equals y and I hope, beyond hope, that the result of this blog's equation is never zzzzz...
I appreciate that articles on/in a blog about the blog itself aren't exactly pivotal in the province of excitement. I'm not daft. But it is content. It's something to fill a space. Something that might make you think, or laugh, or cry, or feel horny, or prompt you to remember something. Because anything can be responsible for anything else. Like word association or Chinese whispers. "We" don't know what a ridiculously high percentage of the brain actually does so I won't blame you if, right now, you're thinking about the fact that you need to take a shower, or eat, or buy toilet rolls when you next go shopping. And that's what you are thinking, right now. Even if you don't need them, you're thinking that you might.
It isn't my job to alleviate boredom, although I know I could try if someone paid me.
I think more people are bored than used to be bored, just like more people complain about things. It's not that anything is getting any worse, it's just that people are more inclined to complain about things. And the world isn't getting any more boring. There are more things to occupy minds in 2006 than there have ever been. So why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why oh why do "people" always tell "me" that they're "bored"?
It might just be semantics or a state of mind, but boredom, to me, is just an easy way out. It's the escape route for those challenged by their potentially unlimited vocabulary. Confuse boredom with apathy or lack of opportunity or the inability to generate options. Just call it something else.
Please.
This blog is a child, a baby, born a matter of days ago. Unlike a baby in that it can speak and move, but like a baby in that it can't really do anything for itself, or recognise its own hands, or understand. This blog doesn't understand. It doesn't know what it wants to be any more than I know what it wants to be, or what I want to be come to that. I just want less than half of the hits to be created by me.
Anyway. Back to the question, "What do you want your starting count to be?" I could have chosen any integer, literally, but I chose zero.
Apt.
4 comments:
I've been counted...hmmm is that good or bad? dunno and I suppose it doesn't matter. well done on your blog tho. JMW
I think you've done well to get nearly 400 hits in a few days. It took me about six months to get that!
people who cry "I'm bored" are bored because they are incapable or reluctant to think of something to do or to think about something to think about. Look inwards not outwards, I can't remember the last time I was bored. Sorry is this supposed to be about you?
you've been bookmarked since you made this bloody page tbqfh
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