Wednesday, October 10, 2012

In Which I Go Meta

It’s a strange thing to have gone viral.

My post about why I am not about to vote for any self-identified member of the modern Republican Party anytime soon has received over sixteen hundred hits so far, which is orders of magnitude more than I usually see for anything I write here.  It’s now the most visited post on this entire blog, outdistancing even the one about our visit to New York City over the holidays that somehow found its way onto the front page of Yahoo earlier this year.

Yeah, I didn’t understand that one either.  But there it was.  For the entire month of January, if you went to Yahoo and searched for “New York City” under the “Blogs” tab, there I was, first on the list.  Well, New York can withstand that sort of thing, I suppose.  That’s one of the things that makes it great.

Almost all of the traffic for Friday's post has come from Facebook, as friends and friends of friends have shared the piece on their walls.  That's a nice thing, really - it means that people have taken the time to read it and felt that it was worth telling their friends about it.  I look at the shares sometimes just to see what sort of reaction people have had, and most of the responses have ranged from positive things along the lines of “I’ve been saying stuff like this for a long time now!” (my personal favorite: “This guy has saved me a lot of writing”) to polite disagreement, which is about the range I was hoping for.  I like when people agree with me, and I like when the people who disagree with me are civil about it so there can be a discussion on the issues rather than the shouting matches that so often substitute for public discourse these days. 

It’s midterm season down at Home Campus right now, which means that most of my mental energy has gone into grading two sets of exams and one set of papers.  What little has been left over from that task has gone toward things like remembering where I live rather than coming up with new blog posts.  But I’ll get back to more posting again. 

Soon. 

Eventually. 

With enough rest and perhaps a wee bit of Drambuie on the side.

In the meantime, I’m happy to see that one spread around.  I spent a lot of time thinking about it, more time writing it, and even more time editing it down from the monster it threatened to become.  Some blog posts are just sitting down and typing out what’s on your mind and some are more involved than you think they’re going to be when you first get the idea.

In the meantime, I welcome those who have come here.  Feel free to look around the place.  It’s not all politics, but it’s home.

5 comments:

  1. I'm one of those who shared your post on my FB (friend of Natalie's). Thanks for such a well-written post--your 9 reasons expressed so beautifully just what I have been thinking, but more cogently organized!

    Lorraine

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  2. Hi Lorraine - welcome to 4Q10D, and thanks for the kind words!

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  3. Your being able to articulate your own perspective with the well thought out, reasoned, reasonable, facts behind you, make your politics post helpful for those of us who are actually reasonably informed. And busy. Thanks for helping me articulate my own perspective. In a reasonable way. In a civil manner which considers the civility of living in a civil society.

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  4. oh, and I found it through a well-read friend on facebook. If he posts it, it's worth reading. The rest of your blog is interesting, and differently personal from the party posting. Cheers.

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  5. Thanks, Iowapainter, and welcome to 4Q10D. I get into politics now and then - more often as things get to me, less as they recede - but you're right, this is not a "political blog." It just visits there once in a while.

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