Paradoxical Post

A while back, in 2021, all Blogger users who had installed the Feedburner "widget" (which was meant to email out copies of posts to those who signed up for it, but only ever seemed to work intermittently) were notified that the facility would soon cease to operate. At the time I explored alternatives (see the posts The Curious Incident of the Vole in the Night-Time and The Dust of Your Feet), but concluded that the only realistic options were either (a) to set up a bookmark and check in periodically (which I'd kind of assumed most regular readers did, anyway), or (b) to use a blog feed of some sort, e.g. Feedly (ditto).

In the meantime, however, a zombified Feedburner seemed to stagger on regardless for a year or so, at least for some, but has now finally stopped sending out emailed posts to anyone. Now, this wouldn't be much of a problem, were it not for the fact that some of my actual real-life friends have never read this blog without the stimulus of a fresh post popping up in their email. So – not being prepared to tolerate being ignored by people who really ought to know better – I decided to act, and set up a mail group so that I can forward on to them the emailed versions of posts that I receive from Blogger myself.

I call this a paradoxical post because I had intended to invite any unknown readers who had also previously been using the Feedburner service to join this group. But – logically, captain – you are almost certainly reading this post because, as above, you have either (a) set up a bookmark and check in periodically, or (b) use a blog feed of some sort. Either of which is superior in every way to the emailed version, which is poorly formatted, lacks comments and revisions, can be intermittent, and so on. So the chances are that – if the Unknown Readers are as unconvinced of the indispensable nature of the wit and wisdom of these posts as certain of my actual real-life friends – then they are not reading this post, and consequently wouldn't have been in a position to ask to be added to the list, anyway. Paradox!

Although I'm not sure why I'm bothered. Much as I'd like to increase the number of my readers, I suppose I shouldn't complain: compared to most low-ranking blogs I probably attract a respectable number, even if that number is statistically insignificant in a world where successful bloggers, influencers, tweeters, and whoever else must weigh rather than count their readers (and most likely have their people do it for them).

For example, here are my Blogger stats for a typical recent seven-day period, analysed by country:

Those 1492 hits are pageviews over the seven days rather than individual readers, I think, and Blogger's figures have never been entirely reliable, although they have improved over the years, and do now roughly match the returns from Google Analytics. I think this is probably because the click-bait robots that used to inflate the counts dramatically have finally given up on blogs as the preserve of unfashionable, unmonetisable, status-immune oldies like me.

But, given how Anglocentric my focus is, what always surprises me is how many of my readers are based in the USA: it's usually somewhere around the 70% mark. My fantasy is that at least one or two of these readers are gallerists, and that one day I'll be invited to give an exhibition somewhere in America. They're not, of course, but it's such idle daydreams that sustain the solitary artist's morale and productivity. I could and probably should be more proactive, sending out portfolios and statements and all the rest of the self-promotional rigmarole, but at 69 just thinking about it makes me feel very tired [1]. Besides, for a late-starting, self-taught amateur I'm having a good-enough run: let those fashionable, monetisable, status-susceptible youngsters elbow their way to the trough. They'll be old, too, soon enough, and wondering what all the fuss was about.

1. Also, let's be honest, such fantasies can be more nourishing than the inevitable series of rejections and knock-backs that result from self-promotion. I was taken to task over this by Rupert Larl, the director of the Innsbruck gallery that hosted my two main solo exhibitions, which stung a bit at the time – not least because both shows had happened by his invitation, not my solicitation – and left me thinking, "Rupert, mate, have you not read my statement?". Nonetheless, he was right: if you really want to get your work out there, you've really got to make the effort. To adapt a meme, if all you do is build it, they bloody well won't come without an invitation.