Grumble alert about a certain phrase I too often see on the Internet: after reading the hit counts on a blog post, interview, or story, the writer decides whether or not anyone "cares" about the writeup. Now I know I've written about my annoyance with people who think nobody cares when nobody posts a comment or sends an e-mail, but this is a slightly different deal. Let me explain my side, as a reader:
This afternoon, I saw an Ain't It Cool News post featuring pictures from Paul W.S. Anderson's remake of Death Race 2000. The post leads to another post, this time on JoBlo, featuring more pictures. I'm a curious person by nature, and since I recently saw the original Death Race 2000 for the first time, I was curious about what the cars look like and who's in the movie. After skimming through the pictures, I moved along to another site I regularly check.
Here's the really important part: do I really care about this movie? No, I'm pretty much against remakes of classic movies, even if the originals don't have the best special effects. I think it's very safe to say that I won't see the remake just by the sheer idea that this is a remake. Do I believe merely clicking on a post about this movie automatically means I care about this movie? I don't think so. But when we're left to decide what our readers think and do based on hit counters, we only have our imaginations.
In my time of blogging, I've had a few posts that have generated a lot of traffic and some that have generated far, far less. Do I really know how the forty to sixty different hits a day actually translates to number of readers (and moreover, thoughts from those readers)? Absolutely not. I know I have a small number of regular, daily readers, and I occasionally hear from them either via e-mail, comment in the comment section, or in person. But I can't truly gauge the amount of interest these people have in what I write. Frankly, I don't tear my hair out over what goes over with them. I just write, and people read. Isn't that enough to know?
This afternoon, I saw an Ain't It Cool News post featuring pictures from Paul W.S. Anderson's remake of Death Race 2000. The post leads to another post, this time on JoBlo, featuring more pictures. I'm a curious person by nature, and since I recently saw the original Death Race 2000 for the first time, I was curious about what the cars look like and who's in the movie. After skimming through the pictures, I moved along to another site I regularly check.
Here's the really important part: do I really care about this movie? No, I'm pretty much against remakes of classic movies, even if the originals don't have the best special effects. I think it's very safe to say that I won't see the remake just by the sheer idea that this is a remake. Do I believe merely clicking on a post about this movie automatically means I care about this movie? I don't think so. But when we're left to decide what our readers think and do based on hit counters, we only have our imaginations.
In my time of blogging, I've had a few posts that have generated a lot of traffic and some that have generated far, far less. Do I really know how the forty to sixty different hits a day actually translates to number of readers (and moreover, thoughts from those readers)? Absolutely not. I know I have a small number of regular, daily readers, and I occasionally hear from them either via e-mail, comment in the comment section, or in person. But I can't truly gauge the amount of interest these people have in what I write. Frankly, I don't tear my hair out over what goes over with them. I just write, and people read. Isn't that enough to know?
Comments