The Strange, Capricious Eye Of The Internet

Before last year, two of the top three posts on this blog were my review of Beowulf (because it contained a link to a picture of Angelina Jolie's naked CG body) and a decidedly lowbrow one-off "nothing to talk about today" post (that featured a picture of a chimp groping a woman). Hmm... I guess maybe the internet's eye isn't so capricious after all.

At any rate, not exactly my best work.

That changed late last year. Thanks to the magic of social media, one of my posts on gay marriage in Minnesota went viral during election season, and from it, I got more traffic in that month than I had had in the previous five years of this blog. It was great! I got a lot of positive feedback from it, and there was even an honest and engaging debate in the comments as well. Good times.

I'm still pretty proud of that post, and here's why: right before the election, I saw it re-posted by a stranger. A blue-collar, salt-of-the Earth fellow from rural Minnesota shared a link to it with a challenge to read it and not be changed. As if that wasn't enough, even better was that beneath his post, there was a beautiful thank you message from his daughter. That was very humbling and it brought a tear to my eye. It still does.

Since then, my blog has mostly returned to its former modest traffic levels. But I'll keep writing, because it's good fun. And maybe someday I'll move someone again. I know that the effort is worth it.