Froggie’s Lilypad

UPDATE: After reading the full thread on the Guardian message board, I’m about 85% sure that the guy is, in fact, Petty Guy and not just some random person who saw my site. It is far too coincidental to be random, especially since he STARTED the thread, poked at people to keep it going, and then seemingly disappeared once he linked to my site. This will be the last I ever say on the subject because… well, I suppose giving him even this much attention was too much attention.

Recently (as in last night before I went to bed), I decided to check my stats. I hadn’t done that in awhile and I don’t exactly know what possessed me to do it then. But I did, and I noticed that I was getting a LOT of referrals from The Guardian website. If you don’t know what that is because you, like me, are United Statesian, it’s a British newspaper.

So, I checked it out because I have no idea why a British newspaper website would be linking to me. When it comes to Globalization, I’m nobody and I’m fully aware of this fact.

Color me surprised to see that it was a guy on the website’s message board talking about his lack of understanding for why certain blogs exist. Obviously he used this site as an example of “there’s no explanation for why this exists.”

I’m ok with that… I’ve written before (feel free to dig through my archives) about the fact that I don’t really care if people throw around the “banal and useless” tag to describe this blog.  This blog is obviously not for them, nor for the people who agree with them. I’ve also talked before about my reasons for blogging (again, feel free to dig through my archives), so rest assured that my justification for being here has been documented.

What got me writing about this is that I’m a little… confused(?) as to why THIS site is on the radar of anyone in the UK who would be discussing blogs on a British newspaper’s message board. If you don’t know me or anything about me, you may not know that I have friends and “ex-friends” in England. There is a small handful of people there that have known me IRL and either don’t like me or know I don’t like them¹. Relationships can be tricky things, so I don’t blame that small handful of people for feeling the way they feel about me… so long as they understand that I have a right to feel the way I feel about them.

I’m digressing, though, but I think I’m making my point clear enough. The guy? The one that linked to this site randomly and seemingly out of the blue? Well – I have to wonder if he’s one of those people. Bit petty if it is, but… well, there’s a prime example of why I feel about him the way I feel².

If it’s not him – if there’s just some guy in the UK who just happened to stumble onto this site by accident and decided that I was the PERFECT EXAMPLE of “why the hell does this exist?!!?!” I suppose I’m a bit flattered. There are millions of examples he could have used, but he chose mine. He could have just used my title and not linked to me at all, so as not to boost my visitor stats. Instead, he chose to give me a full link.

Either scenario, though, I just want to say “thank you.”  If you’re the Petty Guy who is doing this out of spite, thank you for reminding me of the reason I think you’re an asshole (or, should I say “arsehole” so you could understand me better?). If you’re the Random Guy who just chanced along this site and gave me a full link, thank you for boosting my readership – no matter how briefly it was done. In both cases, thank you for giving me something to post about… thereby giving the Guardian’s forum users something new to look at when they click by here.

1. ABritishGuy – just in case you’re reading this, rest assured that I’m not talking about you. [↩]
2. I’m using “he” as a generic pronoun here – it could easily be a female and still be just as true. [↩]

Trackback this Post | Feed on comments to this Post