Despite this blog - begun in earnest almost exactly seven years ago - today passing the mark of 3.5 million page views; all signs are that this blog in particular, and the blog as a medium, is of dwindling impact.
The most recent sign was a sudden halving in daily traffic from 20 to 21 April (from 3000 plus to about 1500 views) - presumably as the result of some search-engine change, presumably related to the new wave of fake-'fake news' anti-Left dissent-suppression.
I find very little indeed to sustain me spiritually on the internet on a daily basis; and it is possible that such sustenance does more harm than good once a certain threshold of awareness is passed. Either way; the mainstream mass media are strategically making it harder and harder to find and access information the media don't want accessed (not just on the internet, but also in public venues, talks, lectures and the like); and it is only the bovine blindness of the media-numbed-and-addicted, short-term-selfish-hedonic-materialistic mass population that apparently masks the sudden and sharp ramping-up of our established Western totalitarianism.
However, we need to remember that the real war in this world is about souls, salvation and spiritual progression - and since the evils of the mass media cannot (even in principle) be defeated by 'alternative' strand of mass media (such as this blog) - then anything which damages the reach and attraction of the mass media is, overall, to be welcomed.
After all, the mainstream mass media has triumphed mainly by means of its form not its content, its size and growth not its detailed control - as I wrote in my mini-book Addicted to Distraction:
http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.co.uk
The past few months (triggered, I guess, mainly by the US election lead-up and result) therefore represent a major change in policy by the mass media - in attempting to control content, rather than maximise growth. And I believe this is a strategic error on their part, and therefore a victory for Spiritual Christians such as myself - because only for as long as the mass of people are engaged by the mass media is my side's situation really dismal.
If the mass media loses its grip - and if therefore people start refocusing on their own personal experience of reality - then there is potential for the vast artificial edifice of evil that is secular-Left-modernity to collapse - very rapidly indeed (timescale of weeks, not years).
What replaces it will surely be uncomfortable at least, and perhaps very unpleasant (certainly it will be as unpleasant as the current demonically-driven global leadership can contrive to make it) - but since we are ultimately concerned with human souls in the timescale of eternity, it would nonetheless be better than the current situation of The West; in which the state and the media combine to induce ever more people to subvert, destroy and ultimately invert Goodness itself; so that many people now actively embrace, advocate, and enforce evil - calling it a new-kind-of-Good; and reject virtue, beauty and truth.
In such a context; the diminishing impact of blogs in general, and this one in particular, is a price worth paying.
Some other factors are also at play with regard to your blog in particular Bruce.
ReplyDeleteYour policy on comments has gone through a bit of flux, and I know that when comments were at times not even able to be left that it discouraged me from visiting as regularly. (I love to read and then after a suitable period of reflection, respond. When that is easily done, I find a blog more attractive to me, even if I fundamentally disagree with many of the points a writer makes.) My distinct preference included when I could simply leave a comment - as anyone could - without explicit credentials. Since you were the filter for whether a comment went onto your blog, you still had control, and yes I did always attach my name, and I have a pretty obvious writing style which is easy to discern.
I hope that you continue, as even when you and I are in substantial disagreement, I respect your intelligence. You provide me with insight into a mindset that I don't share from a religious frame, and hence it is helpful to see someone I respect arguing from that frame. Otherwise, I find the religious frame perplexing.
As a loyal reader/lurker, I hope you remain posting here as long as you are able. You would certainly be missed.
ReplyDelete@Nick - Welcome back
ReplyDelete@Ed - Thank you - I shall do it for as long as I sense it does good (and am able).
"I find very little indeed to sustain me spiritually on the internet on a daily basis." Not surprising at all. But I find you and William Wildblood, and I am continually grateful for that. You are an anchor keeping me grounded in reality when everything else is distraction and falsehood.
ReplyDelete@Nick - I think you may be misinterpreting what I have said - my all time peak monthly page views were as recent as December 2016 - with 104K (last month down to c 81K - but for comparison April 2013 was only 34K). The second highest viewed post of all time was from last September.
ReplyDeleteUp until then, the monthly page views show a pretty steady increase from 2010 (as would be expected since content volume is being added-to), then a plateau through 2014-15, and a big surge in 2016. However, there has been a rather sudden and unexpected decline in 2017, and especially on 20-21 April.
This has nothing much to do with blog content, and almost certainly has to do with larger scale internet search and linking aspects.
(I have seen similar reports from some other internet content providers.)
Thanks for the clarification, I must have misread it.
DeleteI should also note that page views of new blog posts are the same as they ever were (about 400 views per post, on average)- so presumably the decline since 21 April is in people linking to 'old' and archived posts.
ReplyDelete@Jonathan - Thanks very much. I forwarded your remark to William W, who was also very pleased to hear it.
ReplyDeleteI understood - perhaps incorrectly - from a post a couple of months ago that you were stopping blogging entirely, but I just dropped back to and found that you were posting again. It is really easy to forget that 'the real war in this world is about souls, salvation and spiritual progression.' And it is really helpful to read those words because they immediately restore my shaky and easily distracted ability to make those things my main focus. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteIgude - I no longer hold myself to daily blogging - but sometimes I find it helpful to write what I am currently thinking-through. Also I concinute to blog once a wekk or so at Notion Club Papers and Albion Awakening.
ReplyDeleteI have only just come across your blog through linking from SocialMatter. I enjoy it and intend to follow.
ReplyDelete@Sam - welcome. One difference between here and SM is that I am writing from a spiritual and Christian perspective (that is a Christianity this is primarily personal, rather than institutional - although I respect and support real Christianity wherever I find it, including unorthodox and unusual places - so long as it is Real) - and the politics must serve that primary goal (not vice versa). To state that, is much harder than actually living up to it - but that is what Life is about!
ReplyDelete