The most recent posting on this topic: on 3/5/19, “Another 100k spams”, where I noted that the number of spam comments here (since the blog started in December 2008) passed 5,600,000 on 3/3. Some were automatically deleted by WordPress software, a great many more were made available for bulk deletion (or individual inspection) by me, and some were submitted to me individually for moderation. In periodic spam attacks, comments spam arrives at the rate of more than one per second (until the software wrestles it to the ground again).
That was 3/3. On 7/23, the count passed 5,700,000. And then, yesterday (12/30), 5,800,000. 6 million beckons! (Probably not next year, but soon.)
Along with the current count of spam comments, WordPress supplies daily reports on views of my blog, and a weekly summary. These statistics are stunningly unhelpful, as I’ve explained in earlier postings. They overestimate some views (from spammers collecting links for their spam) and underestimate others. If they are to be believed, my readership has been steadily declining for some time, and is now about half what it was a few years ago. If I look at the postings that get comments, likes, or links in other sites, it would appear that most postings attract only 10 to 20 readers, but I know that can’t be right (though I am gratified by the attention I get from an appreciative core readership). So my readership is largely a mystery to me.
Here’s the weekly summary from yesterday (12/30):
(#1)
Notes on the searches: see my 6/17/16 posting on New Yorker cartoonist Anatol Kovarsky; I can’t see that I’ve posted on Brian Dietzen, whether fully clothed or shirtless, but it’s definitely something I might have done (see below); and the symbol with a circle and an arrow is the (phallic) male sign ♂.
Brian Dietzen (born 11/14/77) plays medical examiner’s assistant Jimmy Palmer on the original NCIS tv show. His acting niche is Adorable Young Man, but it turns out that he’s not only cute, he’s muscular and hot:
(#2) From Watch! Magazine for June 2016 “He works hard for the muscle” (photography by Cliff Larson)
Top Posts. An amalgam of three contributions, beyond views of the home page / archives by people searching for things:
— first, a list of postings that WordPress recommends to people because they’re the most viewed postings of mine (thereby pretty much ensuring that they go on being the most viewed postings): “The body and its parts” has been on this list forever, and “Sexting with emoji” is also venerable; “Displaying your nipples” and “Crude japery” have more recently floated to the top. It’s all about the sex.
— second, a few very recent postings that attract readers for a short time after they appear: on the list above, “Hung with care” (sex and recency), “Revisiting 40: Bird X” (no sex), and “Holimanteaus and restaumanteaus” (some sex, in the breastaurant department).
— finally, items that pop up from the past because someone linked to them on the net and that attracted a momentary flurry of attention: above, “#BadStockPhotosOfMyJob for linguists”.
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