Not likely, since Plotinus is a long-dead 3rd century Greek philosopher and Paris Hilton is, well, Paris Hilton. But Google has taught me that it is weblog postings with subjects like this that lead to popularity in the blogosphere.
Not that I have a huge desire for HinesSight to have lots of readers, of course. If I did, I’d write about my relationship with Paris Hilton (see “Family” category) more than the two times I have. For my daily perusal of TypePad Visitor Stats has led me to a not very astounding conclusion: Internet users are a lot more interested in sex and politics than in philosophy and spirituality.
Ever since I wrote about my Hilton family genealogy and the fact that Paris and I are second cousins, I’ve observed on my TypePad statistics that Google/Yahoo “paris hilton relatives” and similar searches lead Paris acolytes to my weblog with wonderful regularity. However, I am quite sure that they do not stay around to peruse my profound and eloquent musings on so many other subjects, such as Plotinus.
Thus, I need to find a way to somehow associate Paris Hilton and Plotinus in a fashion that is both true and transparent (Plotinus would not want it any other way). I would feel bad luring people to my weblog with a provocative mention of Paris’ philosophical tastes—though admittedly I may be doing just that in this posting—which is not founded in rock-solid Hiltonesque reality.
So if a Paris Hilton publicist happens across this writing in a “what are people saying about Paris?” Internet search, here’s my pitch: Imagine Paris and Nicole sitting down with a Hilton relative at his home in rural south Salem to discuss his book about Greek philosophy. Great stuff. Much better than most of what was shown on “The Simple Life.” Like Paris, we’ve got an absolutely charming dog (see “Serena” category) and my wife has long blonde hair, so there are some connections we can build on.
Her person could call my person. Except, I’m my own person. So you can email me and we’ll take a lunch. Private jets are most welcome at the Salem airport. We can hang at the Coffee House café and do some organic chai.
If this plan doesn’t pan out, I’ll have to go the politics route. A few days after I wrote a posting called Hilarious “This Land” Bush/Kerry download, I was thrilled to log onto TypePad and find that thousands of visits were being made to HinesSight. The peak was 1,900 on one day, I think, and visits stayed over 1,000 for the rest of the week. (Without divulging my baseline popularity, let's just say that this was an above-average week--to put it mildly).
The first time I saw this action on the TypePad stats page, for a nano-second I said to myself, “Yes! Plotinus has finally hit the big time! People all over the world are flocking to learn more about mystic Greek philosophy!” But after that nano-second I saw that virtually every referrer was from a search engine query for “bush kerry this land,” or such. Somehow Google and Yahoo had plopped me near the top of their search results. Go figure. The power of weblogs, I guess.
I’m pleased that HinesSight has been able to guide quite a few people in the direction of the wonderful Jib-Jab “This Land” animation. It is both hugely entertaining and right on politically. Throughout the Democratic convention I couldn’t help but think of the “and I’ve got three Purple Hearts” line every time (and it was often) mention of Kerry’s war hero-ness came up.
I also thought: Hmmmm. When did the Vietnam War become such a great memory for liberals? All I remember in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s were protests against the war. Bring the troops home! Watching the convention, I could almost believe that Vietnam was a high point for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Democratic operatives are as good at spinning history as Republican operatives. They just spin to the left rather than to the right.
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