A sad story, illustrated

Vaguely related to the earlier awstats data dump, in the sense that it comes from the same source :

This current month, people loading Trilema as a result of clicking some link on Stan's blog loaded 152 pages. People following the Trilema comments feed on the old url - which has been sporting a 301 for about a year now - loaded exactly as many pages.ⁱ My great fans over in goonland loaded 137 pages. Some random twitter derpage we'll gladly ignore.

Then some random kid that failed to do much recently and readily admits to it sent people loading 98 pagesⁱⁱ. Then Gawker with 82 and Washington Post with 81.

I'm not sure that sunk in on the first pass. The obscure blog of a self-identified lowly engineer, which hasn't really mentioned Trilema recently, carries twice the power of coverage in Gawker, or the Washington Post. He's roughly equal to these two combined.

A random bored kid with a blog started last month compares favourably with supposedly multi-million dollar press outlets. You ever wondered why these guys avoid linking out ? Ever occured to you it's maybe to try and keep the dirty secret of impotence hidden from their subjects ?

Some obscure, meanwhile suspended website (helenmccrory.org) holds its own against the luminaries of journalism. And, of course, Facebook is even lower than that, last on the list. This is why the "buy advertising and pray" plan doesn't work. Especially not if you're silly enough to pay ratecard.

What a strangely democratic world we live in, wouldn't you say, where people with a clue easily command more attention and more power than Conde Nast or that objectionable worm.

To be honest, I'm enjoying it. But for the various would-be powers, gatekeepers and other self-importants all this can't be anything short of a very, very sad story.

It happens.

1. Btw, if you want that rss link, here. [↩]
2. Apparently would-be noob haxxors have a lot more sense than various experts on topics. Funny how that works. [↩]