Thanks a Million!

 

Almost 17 years ago (10/11/2006) I took my first swig of Fletcher’s Castoria and started this blog. Today, the number of hits to this blog passed one million! Thanks to all you readers … including the bots … who have endorsed or blasted my literary perambulations.

A few words about the bots … as best I can determine, about of third of these million hits were manufactured … maybe by Blogspot. Why they would do this is beyond me … particularly since I have not monetized this blog with ads. My suspicion is that these extra blog hits are a kind of a bonus for being a good poster? (We know that Twitter once did this … and I strongly suspect that TikTok keeps its influencers influencing with such phantom hits.)

Again, as best I can determine, my readership may be as many as a hundred real individuals … with 40 to 60 reading any individual post. And, since I publish 4 to 6 entries a day, my daily totals usually run between 200 and 400. When the bots kick in … about once a month … the number can be around a 1000 … lately, even more.

Now, for a little moralizing: If people create statistics … and if they are willing to fudge numbers for their own self-interest … then how can we ever rely on objective results from any inquiry … be it face-to-face or using AI …when the underlying data may be subjective?

STAND UP FOR OBJECTIVE DATA!