Slow and steady wins the race, especially if it’s in bacon fat
I thought this deserved at least an Off The Cuff post:
I was looking at our stats today and noticed that we have a new “Most Page Hits Ever” post — in fact, it looks like it’s been the most popular for a while. And the truth is I went to the stats page to specifically see if it was the most viewed yet, because behind the scenes we’ve all known this day was coming for about a year.
Before now, the most viewed posts were Russell’s Patient BW, DOB 2.16.1971, Mark’s A North Carolina Controversy, and one I did about my parents second date. All of those posts went viral and caused massive but temporary spikes in our site’s stats. The new number one? I’m not sure it’s ever had much more than 1,000 hits a day — but it gets close to that each day, every day, seven days a week, month after month, year after year. Wanna guess what the post was on? Some insightful election analysis, perhaps? Something arguing for or against libertarianism that somehow managed to work in ALLCAPS accusations of racism? Rush fans who get vaccinated while they’re in the hospital being circumcised by James Franco?
Nope: Sam’s How to Make a (Basic) Ground Beef Chili.
Anyway, I thought I’d post this little announcement once I saw– partially to allow Sam to do a victory lap, and partially because I went back and reread it for the first time since he posted it back in 2012. I’d forgotten how incredibly entertaining a read it is. You should all go back and read it, and help pad his ever-growing, cancer-like stats. Seriously, it’s really space-awesome.
There’s probably a lesson to be learned here somewhere, and it assuredly has something to do with steady tortoises, quality writing, and fascism vs.bacon fat.
In a billion year fro now, our sun will have died out and the human race will be a distant, long-forgotten memory, and Sam’s chili recipe will still be racking up page hits.
Truly.
Perhaps it’s a universal constant that regardless if you hate “whitey”, “the man”, “privilege”, or “coercion”, you still like food and maybe, just maybe, you love chili.Report
*weeps*
*rends garments*
*goes and prepares a pot of chili*Report
That was pitch perfect doc.
Also congrats Sam.Report
Tod, this was a very nice thing for you to have written. More broadly I should simply say that I not only appreciate my accidental gaming of Google’s results – calling it a “basic chili” seems to be what brings people to the post, not its quality – but also the opportunity to write here amongst so many hugely talented and deeply thoughtful people. It is an injustice that at a place with so much good writing a chili recipe should take the presumably temporary top spot.Report
Pish-posh. This is a blog about culture. Food is culture. And not only is your chili recipe good, it’s fun to read.Report
Food is culture.
Especially if you don’t refrigerate it.Report
“Injustice” is a bit too far. I would admit it’s “initially surprising” as well as “seemingly incongruous”.
And it is only initially surprising because when you think about it from the perspective of a general reader, it becomes obvious that a post that can actually help a reader do something they were looking to do would be more popular than some contemplative post that might make a number of good points but won’t be applied.
I would prefer to live in a world where the contemplative stuff were rewarded more, but it isn’t an injustice that it is not. Pre-internet, people like us would be lucky if we had even one friend who would entertain such discussions. Everyone else we met would only be interested in the weather and recipes. That we have a venue that lets us rest on an equal chili recipes is a boon.Report
There is nothing to be ashamed of, and quite a bit to be proud of. That’s tens of thousands of people who were able to cook a good, hearty, and delicious meal thanks to your assistance. And laugh in the process. The most articulate post arguing on the intertubes can never hope to approach that standard of helpfulness.
Now, if you want something worthy of shame, for about the first two years of the site, the most-viewed post was this: https://ordinary-times.com/blog/2009/08/04/megan-fox-day
I think we all uncorked a bottle of champagne when it was finally overtaken by one of Jason’s posts.Report
Thank you for your kind words.
And am I missing something about the Megan Fox post? Was the picture particularly saucy or did it trip-up the search engines in just the right way?Report
I think it was just the latter – as I vaguely recall, it was just a headshot. What’s weird is that it stopped generating hits entirely after about two months. Thankfully.Report
We need to do more cooking posts.Report