By I’m fairly certain that if I were any other human being, I would have been excited by the series of notifications I got from WordPress last week.
For the record, my blog here is hosted by WordPress. Hosted as in where I pay for my blog to live. They don’t give me free blog. Well it could be free because they offer that but I pay for it. And they don’t pay me for it. Basically what I’m saying is that this isn’t an ad for WordPress. They don’t care that I’m here.
At any rate. While I was on the cruise last week, I received a fun notification from WordPress that my blog has surpassed 100,000 views.
As I am a terrible blogger, I have no idea if this is an amazing milestone or just another Saturday afternoon for any other blogger.
It’s confusing because I’ve been on WordPress for 9 years according to a recent notification from them but THIS blog, Avoiding Neverland (formally Josh’s Universe) hasn’t been around as long. The 9 years celebrates the birth of “Breaking Down Digital Walls.” You know… my other neglected blog.
Based on the first post, I started this blog in March 2015 so… Avoiding Neverland is 7 years old. 100,000 views on this blog in 7 year.
Also, I just got curious and looked at the views on “Breaking Down Digital Walls” over the past 9 years. As of writing this, it’s sitting pretty at 40,633. I’ll take it considering I have been horrible at posting there and it’s an educational blog and all that jazz.
So I guess it’s pretty cool that my weird little blog has been viewed over 100,000 times. According to the stats it’s been viewed by over 74,000 visitors. Which I don’t know if that’s individuals or if multiple visits by the same people on different days is counted…. Someone who is better at this than I am probably knows.
So, the reason for my writing today is that I’m very concerned about what’s going on in the Philippines.
In addition to getting the notification that I hit 100,000 views, I got a few notifications over a couple days that my “stats are booming!” This is always cause for concern because I then have to stop and wonder what stupid thing I said that was potentially going to get me in trouble.
Turns out a post from June of 2018 has been making the rounds overseas and racking up a decent view count. The post in question is “Reasons Why You Probably Shouldn’t Date Me” which was written as something of a joke but also a giant warning to others. (I went back to look at the post and fell down the rabbit hole of my own blog… I don’t remember writing “Dating in 2017; or, Why I’m Gonna Die Alone” but there it is.)
I’ll likely never know why the post is going crazy right now… in the Philippines…
This is up there with the time my post about how much I hate DoorDash went nuts in Australia not too long ago. Same thing was happening- booming stats with no explaination.
For reference I’m talking about my post “Here’s Why Doordash is Evil, Especially During Quarantine.”
So, if anyone has any insight as to what the heck is happening, please let me know. Maybe someone in the Philippines wants to date me and their on the fence about it so they keep going back to the blog post.
I have a new passport, just send me a ticket and I’ll come meet you in person and offer undeniable proof as to why you shouldn’t date me. I’m great on paper, so much worse in person.
UPDATE: While searching for photos to use as a cover for this post, I fell down a rabbit hole of the Philippines and now I want to visit… so I’m now pretty certain that this was an elaborate conspiracy on behalf of the Philippines tourism bureau (is that a thing?) to get me to visit them and… it’s working. I also have always wanted to go to Australia.
Fuck, that’s some good advertising.
Avoiding Neverland 