The disgrace of 'Stats' and BotW #53

Earlier tonight, before posting BotW #345, I clicked the “Stats” link in my Blogger dashboard for the hell of it. The link took me to the visitor statistics for The Quiet Man.

I think it was the first time I ever saw them. The stats were broken down according to daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and overall hits for the site and its posts. It offered an overview chart which depicted the number of “pageviews,” a list of most popular posts and common traffic sources, and an “Audience” map showing where most readers connected from. I was most impressed by the fact Blogger offered such a feature. It is a neat little thing, but it revealed to me one curious and, eventually, disturbing fact.

The Quiet Man post with the third most pageviews was “Beer of the Weekend #53: Murphy’s Irish Stout.” Huh? I was very perplex why visitors were drawn to that particular post so I checked it out to see what all the fuss was about. It was an average BotW review, but when I scrolled to the end I found what people were probably looking for: the nude portrait of Marie Louisa Murphy.

At the end of the post I wrote: “At 14, she posed nude for this apparently famous portrait:.” Below it was the portrait, followed by, “Should I be ashamed of posting that? No. It’s art.”

What the hell was I thinking? Yes, it is art and is available on Google and Wikipedia (which is probably how I found it in the first place), but I do not think it is appropriate for The Quiet Man. Seeing it on my blog was so disgraceful I became faint. Needless to say I have removed it.

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