Monday, August 15, 2005
ONAN THE HISTORIAN (NOW WITH UPDATES!)
Did you know that men whose masculinity is challenged will compensate by supporting the war? It’s true:
The study shows men whose masculinity is challenged are more likely to support the Iraq war, exhibit homophobia or think about buying a four-wheel-drive car.
Guess I’ll have to sell my girly car and quit hanging out with homocons. In other masculinity news, Cretan Chris Sheil reveals that The Age commissioned a piece from him back in February. It was never published, however, possibly because the University of New South Wales history lecturer spent more than a quarter of the article raving about his gigantic, throbbing readership:
After four months, I had built up to an average of 3000 hits a day. Allowing for frequent visitors and irregulars, perhaps I had up to 1000 readers. I was delighted, but Back Pages was merely gathering pace. At six months I started averaging around 4000 daily hits. At nine months, I went over 6000.
Then, last August, John Howard called the election, and the thing went crazy. While the mainstream media was reporting on how politically disengaged the citizenry was, my average readership doubled to over 12,000 hits, shooting passed [sic] 30,000 on a good day. The number of comments from readers writing back went berserk, regularly breaking three figures.
The madness continued through September and into October, when daily hits averaged 15,000. I guess I had several thousand readers, perhaps approaching 10,000, and their own collective daily commentary was now running to tens of thousands of words.
Back Pages was no longer a mild diversion. It was a runaway underground train. The speed was exhilarating. But I had to jump off, or quit my day job.
Last November, on the anniversary of my year of blogging dangerously, I shut the place down, with two million hits to show for my effort.
Two million, eh? That works out to about 5,400 hits per day. Imagine the pressure! Then excitement! The wild, screaming madness of it all! No wonder Chris had to quit; the bitch goddess that is Popular Blogging was eating him alive! (Oddly, bloggers even more popular than Chris—there are perhaps one or two, globally—seem able to cope. Instapundit is currently averaging 114,627 visits per day, a mere 2022% up on the Cretan, and he’s kept his day job and added other work besides.) Let modest Chris explain how he came to dominate the internet:
Back Pages engaged readers, I believe, partly because the ideal of truth-seeking was always upheld …
So was the ideal of writing crap: “ … the Australian government is now being consumed by a full-blown crisis. With apologies to Hunter S Thompson, I think it’s clear that John Howard has cashed his last cheque with the Australian public.”
… so respectful was I (am I) of the search for the truth in all things …
Oh, yeah: “Apart from his wife, no-one, and I mean no-one, likes John Howard. Underneath, almost all Australians hate John Howard.”
… my experience suggests that engaging readers depends on authors being honest …
Here’s Honest Chris engaging his readers. It’s too bad that Honest Chris’s saucy comments exchange with Gianna has been deleted from this post, but Google turns up a tantalising extract: “Holding tightly to his treasure, he buried himself under the warm towels ...”
Back Pages was not neutral, never indifferent, and never ever short on passion …
At what point does a healthy self-image become a raging delusional psychosis?
If Back Pages is any guide, as the late Doctor himself might have written, the swine, greedheads, pimps, whores and pigfuckers hiding in the trenches beneath lies like ‘fair and balanced’ are doomed.
Er, yes. Except you didn’t change anything, and Howard won with an increased majority.
UPDATE. Christopher takes time out from his busy pigfucker-dooming, treasure-holding schedule to favour us with a reply. In which he spells “cretin” correctly, several times.
UPDATE II. Another reply from Chris, in which I’m accused of falsification, mendacity, stupidity, misrepresentation, dumb creepiness, wrongness, stalking, and dishonesty. For someone who describes his opponents as “swine, greedheads, pimps, whores and pigfuckers”, Chris sure is one thin-skinned unit. Update notice added in headline to calm the Great Blogmaster, He of So Many Hits.