"Whatever Happened To...?"

Sometimes, I think about my readership.  Not too much, because, as mentioned elsewhere, my primary reason for writing this blog is so I will not go crazy.  Or at least no crazier than I already am.  You know how Sarah Palin – or more accurately Tina Fey impersonating Sarah Palin – said she could see Russia from her house?  I can see “Certifiably Loony” from my living room.  And you know about my eyes.  So it has to be close.

Not that my readers don’t play a substantial role in this improbable enterprise.  Imagine if I didn’t have any readers and I continued writing this blog.  That is “crazy” personified!  That’s a guy talking to himself, only he writes it out first.  And then rewrites it.  And then rewrites it again! 

That’s crazy.

I said!  Though, in truth, even an “audience of one” deserves accuracy.

But that “audience of one” is you!

Who deserves accuracy more?  Strangers?

My blog “dashboard” – the “backstage” register – indicates I have 53 “followers.”  I do not know what “followers” means.  But I do know that when I started, I had three “followers.”  So as they say in A League of Their Own, “{53} would be more then, wouldn’t it.” 

Fifty more.  I used to have three! 

In the grand scheme of virality, fifty-three “followers” is an admittedly modest number.  But I don’t worry about that.  If I think about numbers at all – and I have no idea about my overall readership – I think of the throngs – I imagine throngs – who might appreciate what I’m doing but they have no idea that I’m here.   

I heard recently that you can jack up your blog’s visibility by going on Facebook.  You will not be surprised to hear that I don’t know how that works.  Not just that I don’t know how Facebook works.  I do not know how going on Facebook jacks up visibility for your blog. 

How does going on a social media outlet nobody knows you’re on help promote readership for a blog hardly anyone (in the context of world population) knows you’re writing?  It’s possible, I suppose.  Smart people say it works.  But I am far from illuminated on the process, and until I am, I shall respectfully decline to participate.

Put a gun to my head and ask me would I actively do anything to increase my readership, and my answer would be “No.”  Put down the gun, and my answer would be the same.  I don’t even know why I mentioned the gun.  I guess, to inject an element of urgency into the proceedings.  It didn’t work.  And not just because it’s a hypothetical gun. 

It’s not that I’m lazy.  And it’s not that I don’t care.  Nor is it because I’m afraid I will make the effort and nothing will substantially change.  Though that one has a familiarly disturbing ring. 

I simply am not inclined to do anything other than what I am currently doing.  Neither externally – advertising, engaging a publicist, deliberately involving myself in a scandal, so as to secure a parenthetical mention of my blog in the coverage – nor internally – altering my content in the pursuit of increased readership, which I also never did working in television – I did what I did.  They bought it or they didn’t.

The difference is that, in television, when they didn’t buy it, you had no job.  In blogs – and the best part of blogs – besides offering, by the blogosphere’s mere existence, an incentive for daily writing – is that you can write whatever you want.  With no perceivable “down-side” whatsoever.

Except perhaps one.

I am not complaining.  (Which is generally a “red flag” signaling a complaint.)  But over the years, there have been a handful of readers – and regular commenters – who, after a time, have suddenly and unexpectedly disappeared.  Their departures could easily have resulted from changes in their lives, hopefully unserious ones.  Or they just tired of my act.  Still, you can’t help wondering…

“Was it something I said?”  

I know the loss of formerly steadfast supporters is troubling.  But would you ever consider altering your writing to keep them around?

……………………

That’s what I thought.

I know.  But still.