201st

Hi kids, I’ve been in Asia for a few weeks so haven’t had time to post – but more on that later.

We were due for a milestone, so here it is:

Bit of a random number I agree, but the Grand Final post took up the coveted 200th spot, and you know how I hate to see an achievement go by unheralded, so here we are. The 201st post.

Here are a few stats for you to stare at nonchalantly:

Accumulated number of words (not including this post): 103,890.

The average novel is between 80,000 – 100,000 words. So if you have read every post I have ever written, that time could have been spent reading an actual book. Or even two novellas. You could have read George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground, and still had enough words left over to read a dozen short stories. Instead, you chose to read about me eating booger flavoured jelly beans.

Unique hits: 10,620

Page views: 15,915

It amused me to see the stats counter click over the 10k mark, to know that the shoddy blog with all it’s dead hooker charm had that many visits. 10,000 hits might not seem a lot to some bloggers (who could rack that up in a single day), but I was pleased with that figure seeing how I haven’t followed the four golden rules of blogging:

1. Written quality articles.
2. Updated on a regular basis.
3. Promoted the blog.
4. Christmas Carded.

In the case of rule number three: promoting the blog; I pretty much started the shoddy blog, told a handful of people about it – and then left it at that. I haven’t made any attempts to encourage more readers to attend this barrage of filth and fury, and I still have long standing friends (some who often get mentioned on the site) who have no idea this blog actually exists. I prefer to have this tight little community of likeminded cretins (that’s you, kids) then letting the whole world know I’m here. Do I really want potential employers to read about my rants on flicking the bean? Or for potential girlfriends to hear about me head butting the homeless? Or for my great Aunt May to grab a hot cup of tea, sit down in front of her computer, and engage herself in my online witticisms of spinning plates on my morning boners?

It’s just not a blog for mass consumption. If I notify my fellow face-bookers of an update, I do it in code: Status Update - ”beef has updated the shoddy b”. Those who are down with the sickness will know what I am on about, the rest are left in the dark.

And though my parents are aware I have a web-site, as far as I know they’ve never been here. (But if you are reading: Hi mum, and sorry for tackling you when I drank too much red wine when I was 17 and mistook you for a burglar).

In the case of rule number four: Christmas Carding; the tried and true way of building a readership on a blog, is to visit other blogs and make yourself known. If you visit a blog, and leave a comment – then that blogger feels obliged to come back and visit your blog, and leave a comment on yours. After all, it’s the polite thing to do. Visit 50 blogs, comment, and voila – you’ll have 50 more hits before the day is through (and probably 50 comments too). If you spot regular commenters on the blogs you have commented on, then you can harass those people as well – until you have one giant spider web of people commenting on each other’s blogs (aka the blogosphere). I like to call this phenomenon “Christmas Carding”, due to the level of obligation.

Of course, it isn’t all just vapid small talk etched into cyber-space. Genuine ideas and knowledge can be passed back and forth, and real friendships can be forged with people you would otherwise have never met. It all depends on the level of energy you have for such things, of which unfortunately I have fuck all.

I’ve only been visiting a handful of blogs over the years, of which I have included in the link section to the right (fuck, I’ve been meaning to update that thing for a few years now, the Chewbacca blog was taken offline back in 2007). Ironically, I wouldn’t have known about most of these if they hadn’t first commented on my site. Bart, Eris, Lala and Ozi you’ll probably be familiar with, the newest addition is Billo – who is easily the best photographer I know, so go check out his stuff.

To Bart, Eris and Lala – apologies for my absence in your comments sections, know it was due to laziness and not disrespect. No need to apologise to Ozi, he is well aware of my slothfulness, having spent most of his Uni days trying to drag me out of bed.

So anyway, this is how my figures look as per comments over the years:

2006 – 265 comments (3.9 comments per post)

2007 – 209 comments (3.5 comments per post)

2008 – 34 comments (2.1 comments per post)

2009 – 33 comments (0.6 comments per post)

Most of those comments are from casual readers, and not other bloggers. It’s hard to imagine, but we were having entire conversations in the comments boxes at one point (I racked up 34 comments in a single week back in December 06). Compare that to this year, when at one point I received one comment in a 13 post stretch.
My own slackness in commenting is a factor in this outcome. Also, I squandered a lot of momentum I built in those earlier years with an obscene tardiness of posts in 2008 – I think a lot of readers dropped by the wayside at that point. Maybe I’ve jumped the shark with this blog, I certainly get a sense of de ja vu when writing about drunken antics and hangovers, and no doubt my life was more interesting to read about when I was living in a derelict flat in London, as opposed to my current situation of just hanging around Adelaide. All of these factors have something to do with it, but probably the biggest shock to the blogosphere is the rise of facebook, and to a lesser extent twitter.

Back in 2006, blogging was a novelty – as there was a small percentage of people willing to post their pictures and opinions on the internet. Now with the advent of facebook, everybody is doing it. Millions of people who couldn’t be arsed with MySpace, have logged on to the social network of facebook – posting photos, exchanging opinions, taking polls, writing movie reviews, the list goes on. I know of a few bloggers who lost interest in the realm of blogging, and turned their attentions to the upkeep of their facebook profiles, which is, to be honest, a far simpler soap box to stand on. That is what facebook essentially is, millions of small blogs tied together.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing, quite the opposite. The more people involved, the merrier.

At the end of the day, I still get comments about posts I write all the time – but through emails, facebook messages, phone calls and conversations I have at the pub. Nobody can be fucked actually logging in to blogger to leave their comments, and I’m fine with that.

However, it does look pretty fucking lame when every post is full stopped with a glaring “0 comments” reminder. So I’m going to meet you guys halfway on this, and remove the comments function altogether.

If you feel the burning urge to slap me in the face with an opinion, contact me by email:

beefabeef@yahoo.com

Just make sure you put shoddy blog as the subject heading, or I’ll think it’s spam and delete it.

Christ, enough pontification. One last set of stats for ya:

Number of posts per year:

2006 starting March: 68 posts (average of 6.8 posts per month)

2007: 60 posts (average of 5 posts per month)

2008: 16 posts (average of 1.3 posts per month)

2009 up until November: 57 posts (average of 5.7 posts per month)

Though not as prolific as the inaugural year, 2009 certainly hasn’t been tardy in any respect. Stay tuned, as we worm our way into 2010.

If you keep reading it, I’ll keep writing it.