Gotcha
I was waiting for John Scalzi to finally react to my exposure of his significant exaggeration of his average daily blog readers. As I half-expected he would, he waited until he had a big day, in this case courtesy of an article in the Guardian, then responded by putting out a misleading tweet that didn't actually justify his false claim to have "50K daily blog readers".
All the dudebros who adamantly maintain I don't get 50K visitors a day are totally right. #HaHaHa
He then posted this image, which based on the numbers appears to be Wordpress statistics. One could, of course, dispute them based on the fact that there is nothing to indicate they are actual Whatever numbers, to say nothing the fact of one day is not evidence of the daily average. However, I happen to know they are correct, so I will not do so. Instead, I will simply show how they are being used in an intentionally misleading manner.
That #HaHaHa cracked me up. The triumphant pose is simply Mr. Scalzi's usual posturing and the tweet is nothing but blown cover as cover. Despite what the graphic implies, I am totally right and Mr. Scalzi knows it. He does not get 50k visitors a day except on very rare occasions. I previously pointed out that he has, on three occasions, (now four), gotten more than 50k visitors in a day thanks to external factors such as yesterday's Guardian article. That was why I noted how, after first being exposed, he backed down and belatedly modified his claim to "up to 50k readers per day".
So, for no particular reason at all, here is the actual traffic data for Whatever from January 1, 2009 to August 26, 2013, adjusted to reflect the metric chosen in his tweet. In the interest of being perfectly accurate, I've even included yesterday, his latest big day. During that 56-month period, the number of daily readers/visitors to Whatever has averaged exactly 2,972, only 47,028 short of his 50k claim. If we limit the time scale to 2013, that still only increases his daily blog readership to 4,085, the figure I previously cited. Even during his very best month, May 2012, he never came within 35,000 visitors of the 50,000 "readers a day" he claimed.
As you can see, at no point have Mr. Scalzi's daily pageviews even come within 20,000 of the 50,000 daily readers he claimed. While he can legitimately claim "up to 50k readers per day" on the basis of occasional bumps from the mainstream media, to do so in the pretense that those outliers represent his normal daily traffic is not only absurd, it is presenting the statistics in a completely deceptive manner.
Now, I can't speak for any other "dudebros", but I do most certainly continue to maintain that John Scalzi is not only a dishonest and fraudulent self-promoter, he is a serial bullshit artist and he does not get 50,000 daily blog readers. And if Mr. Scalzi wishes to publicly dispute these numbers rather than continuing to present misleading one-offs as wildly exaggerated indications of Whatever's popularity, I absolutely invite him to do so. Unlike him, I do not bluff.
As before, I encourage him to come clean and make his traffic transparent to the public, as do I and many other bloggers. All this continued obfuscation, exaggeration, and denial accomplishes is to make him look desperate as well as dishonest. Given that his derivative writing career was largely dependent upon the successful pretense that he was the most popular blogger in SF/F, it's fascinating to discover that the whole thing was nothing but a house of cards from the start.
John Scalzi is the Bernie Madoff of science fiction.
All the dudebros who adamantly maintain I don't get 50K visitors a day are totally right. #HaHaHa
He then posted this image, which based on the numbers appears to be Wordpress statistics. One could, of course, dispute them based on the fact that there is nothing to indicate they are actual Whatever numbers, to say nothing the fact of one day is not evidence of the daily average. However, I happen to know they are correct, so I will not do so. Instead, I will simply show how they are being used in an intentionally misleading manner.
So, for no particular reason at all, here is the actual traffic data for Whatever from January 1, 2009 to August 26, 2013, adjusted to reflect the metric chosen in his tweet. In the interest of being perfectly accurate, I've even included yesterday, his latest big day. During that 56-month period, the number of daily readers/visitors to Whatever has averaged exactly 2,972, only 47,028 short of his 50k claim. If we limit the time scale to 2013, that still only increases his daily blog readership to 4,085, the figure I previously cited. Even during his very best month, May 2012, he never came within 35,000 visitors of the 50,000 "readers a day" he claimed.
One of the things I found interesting about the Whatever statistics is that contra what one might assume, the engagement of the Whatever warren isn't particularly high. His readers average fewer than six pageviews per visit; better than average but hardly spectacular. And their engagement is observably declining, as it has dropped from 8.4 in early 2009 to 4.1 this month. This can be seen by comparing the daily average pageviews over the same 4+ year period seen in the chart below with the previous chart.
Now, I can't speak for any other "dudebros", but I do most certainly continue to maintain that John Scalzi is not only a dishonest and fraudulent self-promoter, he is a serial bullshit artist and he does not get 50,000 daily blog readers. And if Mr. Scalzi wishes to publicly dispute these numbers rather than continuing to present misleading one-offs as wildly exaggerated indications of Whatever's popularity, I absolutely invite him to do so. Unlike him, I do not bluff.
As before, I encourage him to come clean and make his traffic transparent to the public, as do I and many other bloggers. All this continued obfuscation, exaggeration, and denial accomplishes is to make him look desperate as well as dishonest. Given that his derivative writing career was largely dependent upon the successful pretense that he was the most popular blogger in SF/F, it's fascinating to discover that the whole thing was nothing but a house of cards from the start.
John Scalzi is the Bernie Madoff of science fiction.
Labels: McRapey
101 Comments:
Math is hard.
FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER Scalzi will soon publish a blog post announcing that, like the SFWA, he will no longer talk about the number of readers of his blog.
The Progressive Left has a lot of difficulty with math. Whether that difficulty stems from genuine ignorance or intentional dishonesty is a more difficult question to answer. Except in the case of Mr. Scalzi, I think you cleared that one up quite well, Vox.
Hey, now he can claim up to 60K readers! Yay him!!
FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER Scalzi will soon publish a blog post announcing that, like the SFWA, he will no longer talk about the number of readers of his blog.
I'm rather enjoying the probability that this year, for the first time in years, he won't dare to post his blog numbers at the end of the year. All the while trying to maintain the pretense that he don't care what nobody thinks nohow anyway.
The number of visitors is hrair. That's close enough.
You just can't trust someone who doesn't drink. From the guardian interview:
What cocktail are you most like and why?
I don't drink (no dramatic reason; I just never started), so I would be a rum and Coke, minus the rum and with extra Coke. The good news is, I'll be your designated driver tonight. So drink up.
Vox, is this Eric McCann guy the same guy who libeled you during the RSHD thing?
Never mind, it's Erin Mccan.
Perhaps Scalzi is stating his numbers in Base 6.
Vox, is this Eric McCann guy the same guy who libeled you during the RSHD thing?
No, different writer.
Thankfully, Phoenician will take this recent non-mention by Scalzi into account his next round of statistical averaging here, and only here, in the comments. Because disinterest.
And their engagement is observably declining, as it has dropped from 8.4 in early 2009 to 4.1 this month.
I guess there are only so many "Scalzi in a dress" photos that the blog reading public can put up with.
It takes a very special kind of lunatic to keep flapping about like this.
His wife should buy him something nice to celebrate.
Visitor traffic is kind of misleading in the same way that 'all publicity is good publicity' is misleading. I linked to his website today, but just to make sure a big national news site was actually linking to his feminist rant. How many visitors in those big jump days are just checking out the dork? Anyone will stop and look at a train wreck, but few will actually hang around and develop an attraction for it.
John Scalzi is the Bernie Madoff of science fiction.
That's gonna leave a mark.
You just can't trust someone who doesn't drink.
He strikes me as the kind of person who drinks Skinny Girl Margarita mix. But I figure he would have admitted that publicly as a source of pride by now.
This post was brutal. I mean, like, deep in the jungle with the tiger a few feet behind and gaining, brutal.
Because brutal.
Carry on, these Sca posts are great!!
The Guardian story messes up the facts of the chocolate RAINN affair, too, and again. One would think they would be more careful spouting off about that one...
I dunno, RINO, he seems like a Shirley Temple kinda guy to me.
Vox, I think Mr. Scalzi will do what all good leftists do when challenged in such a manner. He's going to double-down, since coming clean and going with "truth" wouldn't be to his advantage. I expect him to begin inflating his claims of viewership.
I wonder how many of his "visitors" are hits from searches for "this is what a feminist looks like" or "man in dress"?
"It's the #HaHaHa that cracked me up."
But, that tag just proves that he's totally confident and secure and not constantly thinking about your mockery and not deeply affected by what you say in any way whatsoever! In fact, to the extent that he thinks about it at all, he just finds it mildly amusing and chuckles to himself momentarily before totally forgetting about it and sipping some wine! He even wrote out "HaHaHa" to prove how he's just laughing about it while not thinking about it, and he's probably forgotten that he wrote that tweet already! See? SEE?!
But I figure he would have admitted that publicly as a source of pride by now.
I believe our esteemed host once remarked that it takes a real man to drink a chick drink.
Just shows that even super intelligences can be wrong.
Vox, blame yourself. In your article, "Mailvox: John Scalzi IS Stuart Smalley," you posted a link to his website.
I clicked on it and visited there.
Wouldn't it be rich if his numbers today were derived from visits by the Ilk?
and he only had to put on a dress and use the word "dudebro" in a sentence to reach his goal. Cue Vangelis and the Theme to Chariots of Fire.
The Grauniad isn't exactly known for being careful and thorough about checking anything, much less facts of a tangential story.
The Bernie Madoff comment was the Coup de grâce. It's like Tyson vs. Don Knots.
Since Blogger doesn't let me delete blogs from the list of ones I follow, I still see the headings from his blog. Gah. The latest had a picture of a newspaper headline "John Scalzi, Internet troll slayer".
And I still say he has been exhibiting and unhealthy level of interest in his 12 year old daughter.
I could totally use those graphs to prove global warming
But don't you see, of course he provoked being called out because a big meany jerk with a man crush calls someone out, so You pointing this out just makes You look bad. Ooh, Face.
According to the Guardian, Vox wouldn't quit commenting at his site. Huh?!
All the dudebros who adamantly maintain I don't get 50K visitors a day are totally right. #HaHaHa
How many "dudebros" maintain this exactly?
It's strange that Scalzi has switched from the explicitly derogatory "RSHD" to the tame label "dudebro". I wonder what prompted the change.
I'm guessing either he wants to avoid directly referring to Vox and everyone knows "RSHD" refers to him, or in the wake of Vox's response to the SFWA he's afraid of explicitly insulting anyone.
Here stands a man who has neither the respect of his countrymen
nor the love of kin.
Perfidy, thy name is Scalzi.
"Wouldn't it be rich if his numbers today were derived from visits by the Ilk?"
Why do you want to do that to yourself?
There's no point in visiting a site whose gutless owner will ban people who disagree with him.
Scalzi is like the kid on the playground who gets thrown down by a bully, then says "that's cool I wanted to lay on the ground anyways, see you can't bother me!" Then laughs as he slams his face into a nearby pile of dogshit
"dudebro"
I laughed.
Guys, you've got to see this Guardian article to believe it:
John Scalzi: the internet's troll-slayer
"internet royalty"
"he uses his powers for good"
I see now that he's like Bruce Banner. After an overdose of Gamma radiation he gained the power to transform into Gamma Rabbit.
"You're making me squee. You wouldn't like me when I squee."
The dudebros don't like liars, Scalzi. Fess up about your low numbers or we might be forced to throw a kegger.
Anonymous: "According to the Guardian, Vox wouldn't quit commenting at his site. Huh?!"
At, about...what's the diff, right? I mean, it's not like this is Journalism 101....
I see now that he's like Bruce Banner. After an overdose of Gamma radiation he gained the power to transform into Gamma Rabbit.
"You're making me squee. You wouldn't like me when I squee."
Yeah, uh, doesn't he understand that when you're a superhero, you'll have supervillains galore trying to do you in? And sometimes, they stuff your wife's corpse in the fridge in an effort to get to you?
(And the supervillains will usually have more fangirls than you, but that's inevitable if you're Gamma Rabbit.)
Psh, nice try Harsh, but he's totally down for a kegger so you go ahead and throw one...
ah...
... well go ahead and throw it, but he didn't want to come anyway!
Where did the graphs come from?
On another note, why does everything he write seem carefully triangulated between mildly amusing, inoffensive and self-deprecating? Is his fiction that soft too?
I suppose he has little recourse left. None.
It is just my opinion, but I can imagine any time now that he'll announce to the world that it is not his fault he is this way.
Writing about sexual predation, wearing dresses, pride in still fitting into his light green that he maybe wore in 1989 ... problems with math and telling the truth.
Only those closest to him know that he struggles so because he is, himself, a rape survivor.
We can stretch our imaginations even further to understand his very personal pain and shame he has borne since he was a wee lad.
The number-rigging is obvious, as is the dwindling participation and views. The only real question here is...
Should he start posting risque photos of himself in his dresses?
The number-rigging is obvious, as is the dwindling participation and views. The only real question here is...
Should he start posting risque photos of himself in his dresses?
BRAIN BLEACH! STAT!
He could, but I very much doubt the reward is worth the risque.
Where did the graphs come from?
His blog statistics. I have a lot more than that. You may recall that I have friends in various large Internet companies.
And once again the obsessive little mancrush is displayed. You just can't help yourself from talking about him, can you Dipshit?
OK, at this point it just has to be a Poe, doesn't it?
@rho - the one book of his that I read all the way through was like that.
I read the Guardian article. Does any one here use the phrase "she's one of my favorite people"? If so, I am sorry, but that's going right next to squee on my list of things a man should never utter.
No different than you Phoeno ... you can't help yourself.
Hey Vox (or anyone else), I was thinking of reviewing one of Scalzi's books on my blog. Which is his best one? I'm not looking to necessarily looking to tear him apart, I'd like to take an honest look at him as a writer. I was thinking of Red Shirts as that's the only one I could name.
The funniest thing about the Guardian article is the title: "John Scalzi: the internet's troll-slayer".
Because Vox is looking so very slain these days.
And once again the obsessive little mancrush is displayed. You just can't help yourself from talking about him, can you Dipshit?
John Scalzi called me out on my claims, Phony. I'm simply backing up my assertions with facts. You should try it sometime.
And hasn't it occurred to you that the whole mancrush obsession theme isn't working? Even McRapey himself has largely abandoned it, just like he abandoned pretending to enjoy the attention, and so forth.
Isn't fire required to slay a troll? I guess if your reputation is going down in flames there could be some collateral damage.
Hey Vox (or anyone else), I was thinking of reviewing one of Scalzi's books on my blog. Which is his best one? I'm not looking to necessarily looking to tear him apart, I'd like to take an honest look at him as a writer. I was thinking of Red Shirts as that's the only one I could name.
Old Man's War. His debut. It is by far his best.
And once again the obsessive little mancrush is displayed.
Psst.
If you're going to describe what you're doing, the proper method is to put an asterisk on either side of the phrase. Thus:
"*once again, the obsessive little mancrush is displayed* You just can't help yourself from talking about him, can you Dipshit?"
You're welcome.
And once again the obsessive little mancrush is displayed. You just can't help yourself from talking about him, can you Dipshit?
This is one of the weakest attacks I've seen on this blog since I've been here. The point seems to be to make Vox feel bad, by insinuating he is somehow obsessed with Mr. Scalzi. It is then followed up with an unimaginative expletive.
If you knew anything about Mr. Beale, you would know that he is invulnerable to low-brow personal attacks. He won't stay up at night stewing over your opinion of him, or Mr. Scalzi's opinion of him. He won't give you a second thought, except to demonstrate the utter lack of originality in your post. But you, I suspect, will continue to troll here, despite being shot down each and every time you deign to put your fingers to the keyboard.
So who is it then who has the crush? Hint: There is a mirror in your bathroom.
And once again the obsessive little mancrush is displayed. You just can't help yourself from talking about him, can you Dipshit?
VD is responding to Scalzi's post about him. And yes, even though Scalzi is too much the gamma pussy to actually call VD out, the post was directed at him. You are a true imbecile, Phoenician. Go back to shelving books before the head librarian scolds you.
"BRAIN BLEACH! STAT!"
It would strictly be a business decision. Sure, he'd lose a few readers. But many of the regulars would think it is very feminist of him. He could do some more fake charity stuff with it and maybe one particular day, after a friendly Guardian article, even get a little oomph of bragging for his game of reader "up to".
Drop that shoulder strap, John! Each one could be worth 3000* more readers!
*up to
Which is his best one?
Old Man's War. Because it is written as an intentional rip-off of Heinlein.
A question about engagement/pageviews per visit. Anyone who opens Scalzi's blog can read multiple posts. It's only if the reader wants to see the comments that he'd has to do more. Is that the definition of engagement, wanting to do more?
Now, if he would spend a dime for each visitor to a certain charity every day, I'm sure those stats he puts out would reflect reality much closer. Then again, his charity might no it be for charity's sake.
I'm still amazed how easily Vox leads opponents into his kill zones, even after announcing where those zones are, and what path to take to get there. And sure enough, they come bounding up the path, get stuck in the zone, and whine about mean ol' Voxy as they come under fire.
Anyone who opens Scalzi's blog can read multiple posts. It's only if the reader wants to see the comments that he'd has to do more. Is that the definition of engagement, wanting to do more?
Yes. it is the same here. You can read nearly 25 posts with one pageview if you just come to the front page and don't click on the comments. This is why a lot of sites divide their articles into 2 or more pieces, to artificially drive up pageviews. Neither Scalzi nor I do that; our pageviews are not inflated.
What is so extra-stupid about this is that 2,000 readers per day (or 3,000 or 4,000) is not that bad. If you care about readership at all, and want to be honest, telling people that you've increased readership to over 4,000/day in 2013 is good info.
If I were, say, an editor at Tor who actually cared about increasing sales, (Okay, yes, a unicorn, we know, but play along) and I had an author who was trending at 4,000 readers/day I'd be tickled because of the opportunity to better engage that audience in purchases.
If I were, say, a potential advertiser, I'd be interested in exploiting the captive audience.
But puffery about 50,000 readers absolutely destroys that. For what? So that people forget that he's a cross-dressing hobo hiding out in a Republican enclave who can't write an original book? It makes his actual daily readership look tiny and insignificant in the shadow of his looming imaginary numbers.
He complains about his daughter relying on technology to do a square root, and then feints leftward on a simple metric of readership, relying on technology to bury his shame that his former boasts don't match with reality.
It is so fundamentally stupid: the guy who drives the serviceable Honda Accord but refers to it as his high-end sports car... Not only do the people find him fraudulent, but they begin to suspect that the dull sedan that he owns isn't even his...
What did he say about not liking to put himself in a position to lie? Whatever it was, he was lying when he wrote it.
The guy likes lying more than he likes modest success. By a lot.
It is so fundamentally stupid: the guy who drives the serviceable Honda Accord but refers to it as his high-end sports car...
But...but...he put a spoiler and reaching stripes on it!
I am puzzled why Scalzi bounced you from the SFWA. Every academic knows that a raging academic debate in academic journals (particularly if expressed byvintemperate language) lures onlookers like a schoolyard fight. Although I haven't checked his pageviews, I expect Little Green Footballs suffered a similar fate after The founder's Great Purge of the last decade.
Racing stripes.
Goddammit autocorrect
You were right the first time Josh. They were reaching stripes.
It is so fundamentally stupid: the guy who drives the serviceable Honda Accord but refers to it as his high-end sports car...
Yeah! That! Or like the guy who feigns shadowy connections used to obtain information otherwise available from various webservices or through basic Google-Fu.
Count 23 of the Retroactive Justification for Kicking Vox Out of SWFA: Publishing super-secret private blog counter stats that humiliate a past officer of the association.
HA! They've got you now!
Phony,
you had a psych class...
and a philosophy class once, right?
Oh and a pony.
For all I know, you may well be right about the general figures, but just to point this out. You say:
"As I half-expected he would, he waited until he had a big day, in this case courtesy of an article in the Guardian, then responded by putting out a misleading tweet that didn't actually justify his false claim to have "50K daily blog readers"."
and
"I previously pointed out that he has, on three occasions, (now four), gotten more than 50k visitors in a day thanks to external factors such as yesterday's Guardian article."
Scalzi posted the screenshot of his site stats several hours before the Guardian article went live, so it can't possibly have been down to that. There was a great deal of discussion on social media about his "this is what a feminist looks like" post, so traffic most likely came from that.
There was a great deal of discussion on social media about his "this is what a feminist looks like" post, so traffic most likely came from that.
Those would still be considered external factors
Vox - Compete (site analytics company) shows Scalzi at never less than 10,000 unique visitors a day, a factor of 10 lower than you claim.
The same site has your blog as too low-traffic to measure. How do you explain that difference?
Scalzi posted the screenshot of his site stats several hours before the Guardian article went live
Did you note this in real time, or are you going on date/time listed for each post on each site?
I like your LiveJournal page, Chris. Especially that part where you think Obamacare will make sure everyone gets treatment for all their ills.
*snicker* And nice job referring to Vox several times without actually mentioning his name.
Vox - Compete (site analytics company) shows Scalzi at never less than 10,000 unique visitors a day, a factor of 10 lower than you claim.
Compete's numbers are projections based on survey data, not actual page views or visitors.
Harsh, don't confuse him by telling him he's "obviously and factually wrong". He might get muddy from the cranky pig.
Or something.
What harsh said. And available at their site:
https://www.compete.com/about-compete/our-data/
That doesn't mean _it isn't useful_ but the metric that you are showing is misleading.
This whole thing with Scalzi started out being funny, and now it just seems sad. More and more, it seems like there's fraud and dishonesty everywhere you look.
Maybe something positive will come from all this and Scalzi will figure out that he needs to man up. But somehow I kinda doubt it.
Not that I'm saying you should let up. Go for the jugular.
Compete (site analytics company) shows Scalzi at never less than 10,000 unique visitors a day, a factor of 10 lower than you claim. The same site has your blog as too low-traffic to measure. How do you explain that difference?
First, that dichotomy alone shows that their method is worse than Alexa's. You have only to look at Sitemeter to know that. Second, even if I didn't know his traffic numbers, I'd know Compete's numbers couldn't possibly be correct. Scalzi would have to average only 2 visitors per Wordpress pageview for that to even be possible, based on his past traffic reports.
Maybe something positive will come from all this and Scalzi will figure out that he needs to man up.
Something positive has come out of this already. Thousands of people now know the truth when previously they were deceived. The truth is intrinsically positive.
Look, I believed the myth of Whatever's popularity myself until December last year. Then, the more I looked, the more I learned how much of it was a carefully spun mirage.
Maybe something positive will come from all this and Scalzi will figure out that he needs to man up. But somehow I kinda doubt it.
The sad part is he thinks he's already manning up.
Prior to this latest episode of his I just saw him as a weirdo, but now I see him more as genuinely pathetic. I guess it just caught me by surprise.
Steveo offers:
Oh and a pony.
Most likely a Hobby horse, sometimes known as a Cock Horse that fits this definition:
A topic that one frequently brings up or dwells on; a fixation.
Oh,dear, another homosexual with a fixation, how odd!
"It takes a real man to wear a dress." Thus spake the true leftist, forever turning reality on its head with a saccharine meme, then forcing everyone else to live with the destructive results of their insane narrative-driven fantasyland.
As I said in the previous post's comments, Scalzi patrols his blog comments like Internet Mussolini and shuts them off when he finally can't take the back strain of sitting hunched over a computer monitor for hours and needs to sleep it off.
Why would anyone click through for the comments when they already know what they will say? It would be an exercise in boredom.
For future hilarity though, check Scalzi's traffic stats when he inevitably starts posting only half a post on his front page and makes readers click through to see the rest.
Interesting ... http://www.similarsites.com/site/voxday.blogspot.com
I'm assuming similarities of content and "visitors". It very well might be more than that.
DanG said:
The number of visitors is hrair. That's close enough.
Well, Vox does say they're "rabbits" :)
Yeah, uh, doesn't he understand that when you're a superhero, you'll have supervillains galore trying to do you in? And sometimes, they stuff your wife's corpse in the fridge in an effort to get to you?
I actually have that issue of Green Lantern, I was shocked when I read it the time, but I didn't know it would ever become the description of a trope. (worthless info: Kyle Rayner's girl friend leaves Kyle some food in the fridge, with a note that reads "I have a surprise for you in the refrigerator", Arch Villain Major Force sees an opportunity for an ultimate fuck you, he murders her and stuffs her in the refrigerator.)
Yes. it is the same here. You can read nearly 25 posts with one pageview if you just come to the front page and don't click on the comments. This is why a lot of sites divide their articles into 2 or more pieces, to artificially drive up pageviews. Neither Scalzi nor I do that; our pageviews are not inflated.
Quite a few sites break articles up for nothing more then aesthetics.
http://www.chud.com/
http://www.best-horror-movies.com/
If you're posting a lot of graphics, links and info blocks it could be a real nightmare to scroll through all that stuff.
For example, an entry such as the following in a normal blog feed would really suck for the visitor:
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film4/blu-ray_reviews_59/the_iceman_blu-ray.htm
"On another note, why does everything he write seem carefully triangulated between mildly amusing, inoffensive and self-deprecating? Is his fiction that soft too?" - rho
Try as he might ol Johnny can't fight his base gamma instincts, and has to do his best not to rustle any feathers.
His fiction tends to be readable/good, but when you're aping sci-fi greats it's kind of hard to go wrong.
I think if left up to his own devices and writing something wholly original, his writing would be softer than ice cream left out on a Texas sidewalk mid-July.
It's probably pointless to worry about people falsifying their page views. I don't know what they get out of doing so, but ultimately, it's pretty much the same sort of fraud as women who want to be 'marines', but 'pass' the test under artificially lowered standards. If someone has so little integrity that they feel they have actually 'achieved' something under this sort of fraud, there's really nothing left in their mind or conscience that you are going to be able to argue with.
It's probably pointless to worry about people falsifying their page views. I don't know what they get out of doing so, but ultimately, it's pretty much the same sort of fraud as women who want to be 'marines', but 'pass' the test under artificially lowered standards. If someone has so little integrity that they feel they have actually 'achieved' something under this sort of fraud, there's really nothing left in their mind or conscience that you are going to be able to argue with.
You keep at it, Vox. good on you.
I suspect that the reason for McRapey's low page views per person is his over use of censorship. When you know that the comments are going to exactly echo the main post, why click to see them? They do not add any value.
Equally, why click to leave a comment if it is only going be deleted? Censorship actively discourages participation.
Conversely, I often find the comments on this blog as interesting (sometimes even more interesting) than the post itself, so I click to see them. And because I know my post is not going to be deleted, sometimes I even leave a comment myself. Hence the higher number of page views per person for Vox, despite the similar layout of the two blogs.
I did comment there at one time, but his announcement that he would start changing comments that made him mad and keep your name attached just made me not want to comment there anymore.
No! Wait! McRapey is NOT a feminist. I repeat: He is NOT a feminist.
Sez so hisself.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/11/18/quick-notes-on-my-personal-feminism/
For his own safety, it is probably a good thing that he spends most of his days online reconstructing his self-image. Because the truth is, he's not good enough and he's not smart enough, and doggone it, even that dog would run away if it wasn't afraid it would end up in a choker at the end of a feather boa.
"It's probably pointless to worry about people falsifying their page views. I don't know what they get out of doing so, but ultimately, it's pretty much the same sort of fraud as women who want to be 'marines', but 'pass' the test under artificially lowered standards. If someone has so little integrity that they feel they have actually 'achieved' something under this sort of fraud, there's really nothing left in their mind or conscience that you are going to be able to argue with."
I don't think it is some sort of psychological thing at all, or at least not the biggest factor--- I think it is mostly about money. He does book and product "reviews" and he promotes the "50,000" on the page which he solicits inquiries. He also tweets the "50,000" for that reason.
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