The Traffic Rocket

Almost four months after it ran, this post has drawn a few thousand visitors since the weekend, thanks to links at a couple of high-visibility blogs. Go figure.

In the interest of continuing the trend, I will begin implementing some of the ideas proposed by The Anti-Moderate:

Suppose there's a blogger out there, not averse to gimmicks, with unlimited time on his or her hands. This blogger wants every web-savvy theo/philo/literary/theory geek to visit the blog on a daily basis, but doesn't want to actually write thoughtful original posts.....

(1. The Zizek interactive timeline. This would be a static page that allowed user generated content. Some kind of flash thing, perhaps, with an ongoing schedule of Zizek's appearances and publications, together with user-generated pictures and anecdotes associated with each appearance/publication. This gimmick alone would ensure vast traffic.....

(2. The Pot-shot Weekly. This would be a kind of blog post to be written once per week. The blogger would vent his spleen on some extremely popular figure / post / blog, thereby generating both traffic increasing blowback and also the traffic increasing support of all the lurkers who feel gladdened that some brave soul has finally expressed their own antipathies. To ensure this feature did not discredit the blog each pot-shot would have to be written humorously and also address itself to the social and/or political aspects of its target rather than actual content or argument or methodology. In other words accusations of racism would be fine -- but verging on the arguable or falsifiable -- so accusations of arrogance, bad "tone", and eccentricity would be better.

(3. Numerous easy, short, daily features. For example: philosophical term of the day; new book of the day (easily garnered from the websites and catalogues of academic presses and then carefully spaced out); hipster-intellectual youtube video of the day; theological lolcat picture of the day; etc.

(4. Controversial lists. Of anything relevant to the audience, thus: best ten books on x relevant subject; worst/best opening lines of philosophy books in last 20 years; best five pens for theorists; five worst morons with blogs; most underrated philosopher. (Note: all real examples I have seen.)

(5. Tantalizing excerpts from new books -- no commentary, just quotes.

So there it is: the fool-proof plan for a gimmick-heavy, theory-geek-snaring, traffic-rocket of a blog.

It still sounds like a lot of effort. Of course, Anti-Moderate does say that said blogger would need to have "unlimited time on his hands," which does not seem to apply.

See also this item, which I am happy to have midwifed, or at least precipitated, however indirectly.

In case Anti-Moderate is reading this: Please let me know how to get in touch, since I know someone who has asked how to reach you. (Some interest in reprinting the Mills-inspired item, is my sense of it.) Just drop me a line here as a comment, which won't be published.)