Christmas came early for me this year. A certain Paul Elam, in an attempt to prove to his donors that his garbage website is more influential than ever, recently posted a screenshot of the traffic stats for A Voice for Men.
By doing so, he inadvertently provided proof that We Hunted the Mammoth is drawing considerably more traffic than his terrible site.
I’ll get to my stats in a second. But first, here’s Paul’s screenshot of AVFM’s traffic:
In his fundraising appeal, Elam declares that “we are gaining steam and momentum.” A post stickied to the front page of his site, meanwhile, informs visitors that “traffic to AVFM has been buzzing for quite a while now.”
Which is a bit weird, because the traffic stats he just posted don’t show that at all. They suggest, rather, that site traffic has basically stalled out at a little less than 800k pageviews a month, down a bit from its peak in June — when AVFM was getting a bit of press attention for its first conference. (The reason the last bar on the graph is so low is that it reflects less than a full month of traffic.)
Thanks for sharing, Paul! Since you were so generous with your stats, let me give you a look at the stats for We Hunted the Mammoth over a similar period.
Make sure to compare the numbers on the left hand side of each pic — and you’ll see that AVFM has yet to come in spitting distance of a million pageviews a month. We Hunted the Mammoth blasted past a million pageviews in October and almost-but-not-quite hit a million last month.
Yep, the story here is that after spending quite a while trailing AVFM, We Hunted the Mammoth really took off this year, and for the past several months has been trouncing AVFM’s traffic. Even though I’ve been taking a bit of a break over the last few weeks — I was pretty burned out — traffic for WHTM could well beat AVFM this month as well.
Then again, maybe Paul’s new cooking column — no, really, he’s already posted the first one — will spice up AVFM’s traffic a little, as it were.
What makes all this even more delicious is that AVFM has more than two dozen names on its masthead. Alongside an assortment of alleged editors and “news directors” from around the world, it boasts both a “Resident Historian” and an “Activism Director.”
It raises, by its own account, more than $100,000 a year to fund its “operations” and pay for the personal expenses of one Paul Elam.
Yet somehow my blog, with a staff of one, is drawing more traffic than the flagship site of the alleged “Men’s Human Rights” movement. I’m happy to see that those who so generously donate money and time and talent to help support We Hunted the Mammoth are getting a lot more bang for the buck than AVFM’s much-abused donors.
The standard line amongst AVFM apologists is that I’m “irrelevant.” If I’m so unimportant, Paul, why are more people reading my website than yours?
Oh, and Merry Christmas!
Kirbywrap:
I have a suspicion that all the recipes are gonna look the same: 1. Decide what you would like to eat. 2. Get a woman to make it for you 3. Go your own way. 4. Eat.
‘Cause grocery stores are for women, amiright fellas? And big strong manly men contend with the earth, and grapple it, and pin it, and make it grow arugula with their bulging, sweaty biceps.
twincats, his first recipe will be:
I actually can’t wait. By which I mean I don’t think he will ever post an actual recipe and this whole idea will be quietly forgotten. I hope ferret David keeps us updated!
I was expecting that the cooking column will just boil down to “Eat Ramen + other cheap instant food and send all money to my site”. But he actually did try to talk about cooking.
Shocking that.
Or maybe not. It looks like just another “Thing I know nothing about but will present myself as a expert anyway”.
@daintydougal:
Done and done.
Huh, links broke.
Home-made Chili Powder:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/abs-chili-powder-recipe.html
Braised ribs:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/who-loves-ya-baby-back-recipe.html
Aaaaaaand now I want ribs.
I never got the appeal of ribs. Then again, I prefer poultry and fish to red meat.
I’ll admit it’s a bit of fun in pulling the meat off the bone. It’s the same reason boneless hot wings have nothing but my contempt and disdain.
Also if made right they’re really good, but I’m like 80% carnivorous too so grain of salt.
They seem like more effort than they’re worth to me, like lobster.
As in, if you think Paulie has any, you’ll surely starve. But hey! You’ll at least die as a lean, mean, hatin’ machine.
O RLY? Then where are you gonna get the fixin’s for your homemade chili powder and your baby-back-baby-back-baby-back-baby-back ribs?
Because, you know, I can’t see Paulie doing anything so…effeminate as gardening. And I can’t see his lazy ass hauling slops out to feed the pigs, either. Much less butchering those suckers.
Ewps! Apologies to any goons I may have offended.
Yeah, well, the same goes for sugar, and any other nutrient, too. But it’s the dosage that makes the poison. People have died from drinking too much water, and that’s a fact. Even though water makes up…er…what percentage of our bodies, again?
But hey, Paulie, go right ahead with your Macho Diet-O. I’ll just sit back here and chuckle as the defeminizing recipes come rollin’ on in on feet of lard.
@daintydougal:
Merry Xmas, blockquote monster!
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the AVFM cooking column contains no actual cooking, just rants about how all other cooking columns are part of the Conspiracy and only Paul Elam provides the recipes of free-thinking and going your own way. But come on, that’s still pretty hilarious.
I’ll be spending the next few days prepping an Edwardian Irish spiced beef for my Dead Christmas Dinner, wherein I recreate the holiday dinner from James Joyce’s short story “The Dead.” I’m also going to attempt a caramel custard, which worries me because I’m terrible at getting desserts to set, but it really needs to be on the table for authenticity. I balked at making a real Christmas pudding and am doing a quick chocolate bread pudding instead.
Hopefully by the time I’m done, Elam will have that chili rub recipe up.
Good news, David.
Elam wrote a column saying he was going to ignore you. Then they threw some mud (based on no evidence) and implying obviously stupid things about you. Then they did an “intelligence report” on you (I think?) and recently ludicrously claimed you mocked male suicide attempters and sexual abuse survivors. Then called you a sociopath.
Nope, they’re too important to bother with the likes of you…
Elam did an article about his strategy, which was basically to increase traffic to his site. It was a few years ago and might well have changed, but the entire MRM continues to fail hilariously to do anything except to make itself look awful.
JohntheOther has recently made his feelings about Elam public. JohntheOther is a ridiculous character, but compared to Elam, he is an intellectual. 2015 will be a bad year for avfm.
catmara:
This! THIS!
XD
pendraegon:
I laughed aloud at that. Mine’s prolly in the same condition.
Buttercup:
::looks at hips::
Too late! D:
daintydougal:
Don’t forget that this is part of the official proceedings around whether a candidate for sainthood should be canonised. Regardless of what one thinks of the beliefs involved, it was a process of examination: were the miracles attributed to X to be believed? Could they be explained another way? The whole name “devil’s advocate” is a bit of hyperbole, really.
Also this troll doesn’t even rate as a devil’s advocate, he’s just boring.
Just a thought, but shall we put some posters up, then proclaim imminent victory, then brand ourselves the world’s fastest growing human rights movement?
I used to visit A Voice for Men to catch up on what was going on in the wide world of misogyny. Now I come here instead.
For those curious about what the difference has been: Elliot Rodger’s rampage was in May this year.
Merus, ugh, yes, all the MRAs would have been flocking there to sympathise with that poor poor misandered boy.
::vomits::
Wow, chili powder. He can mix spices together. What a master.
Welp- I’m gonna brag. 365 of those page views per year are me. Opening WHtM is part of my tab set-up routine.
Even if I’m doing something really important, I’m like ‘I’ll just check & see if there is a new post up from David. Oh what, there *is*? X can wait….’
This blog is full of horrormirth…David takes just the right tone with it.
Instead of just being grossed out and appalled, you get the funny absurdity of this stuff.
David, is there any way to find out how many of those are unique visitors to each site? Obviously repeat visitors and comment-section engagement are also important measures of a site’s success, but a detractor might argue that our ability to hit 300+ comments just by talking about our cats (ALL HAIL THE FURRINATI) might be skewing the pageview results a bit 😛
Well I, for one, am greatly excited about Elam’s forthcoming recipes. Mainly because it means a) less entitled whining and/or vitriol about women and b) he’s grasping for traffic and, perhaps, may be hoping to gasp onto some of the ‘paleo’ food glory. Nothing against ‘paleo’, but there’s a subset of folks in that space who are into biotroofs (and a weird overlap with Asshole Atheism as well)
OT, I went to an amazing Farmer’s market yesterday, and have a jar of pastured lard I can’t wait to crack into! Also fantastic homemade sauerkraut *drool* and enough kale to take me into spring. Anyone got a fave kale recipe? I generally add it to other stuff since Busband hates it unless it’s hidden.
Aaaaaaaand?
There are a million places on the toobz to talk about cats. So then this bemused detractor is going to have to explain why this blog in particular attracts people to read in the first place … and then talk about their furrinati masters.
It’s all part of the Furrinati Overlords’ grand plan, executed by their faithful agents, the Feminist High Council.
Well I, for one, am greatly excited about Elam’s forthcoming recipes. Mainly because it means a) less entitled whining and/or vitriol about women and b) he’s grasping for traffic and, perhaps, may be hoping to gasp onto some of the ‘paleo’ food glory. Nothing against ‘paleo’, but there’s a subset of folks in that space who are into biotroofs (and a weird overlap with Asshole Atheism as well)
Elam mocks paleo as one of the diet fads that lesser sheeple not enlightened to the Truth follow, but his concept of nutrition (no carbs, lots of animal protein and fat, minimal fruits and vegetables) doesn’t sound significantly different from paleo.
I kind of have to laugh at paleo fanatics, since it’s basically just the Atkins diet with a macho name. The rebranding has been ridiculously successful at selling diet books to swaggering “do you even lift” dudebros.
I just made hot-pepper chocolate truffles. Or rather, mixed up the chocolate. I’m currently waiting for it to harden up enough to shape into balls…which I will then crush, as is my misandrous wont.
(Or just roll them in cocoa powder and refrigerate them until the relatives come for Xmas dinner. That will do, too.)
Congratulations, David. This site provides a respite from the MRA vitriol that seems to permeate the Internet. Thanks for all the hard work you do.
I’m a little shocked, or should I say pleasantly surprised, that the conference in Detroit only led to a modest boost in traffic for AVfM and Gamergate led to zilch. The Manosphere may be leaving poor Paulie and crew behind.
But, but, brooked! Paulie is the grand master and overlord of all teh menz rightsers! He said so!
Cooking is a great life skill, so while I fully expect Elam’s cooking column to be ridiculous, he may convince some insecure men that cooking is a sufficiently manly activity, and that could be helpful to them without hurting anyone else. So I think this is a positive step. Most likely the only positive step Elam et al have ever and will ever take.
I am very curious to see the micro farms Elam is apparently going to teach everyone to set up in order to avoid the industrialized evils of the grocery store.
Maybe he’s trying to start a new movement – Customers Going Their Own Way? I’m sure the major supermarket chains are concerned.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. The more publicity they get the more their members realize it is a long con and drop out. The more people who know what they do the more they get the side eye from friends and family at the dinner table.
Yeah, here he goes asking for money again and I wonder if he’ll admit like he did last time on his blog that he pockets all the money. So much for really doing anything for men. His supporters only prove how stupid they are every time they give him money.
cassandrakitty
The sad thing is, there’s more information on this site that will not only get you dates, but may possibly get you laid! And it’s all FREE!
I mean, shit, we discuss how to treat women properly, and that, to me, is like bare minimum in what I look for in a significant other.
Anemone
Of COURSE they’re going to “ignore” David. That’s what they do every time. “We’re going to ignore you! Also, look at all the terrible things you’ve (allegedly) done! LOOK AT THEM!”
And I’m willing to bet that they didn’t (rather: couldn’t) provide proof of those claims. We need to wait until the five Photoshop experts can throw together the *ahem* “proof”. Which will cost the AVfM fans a pretty penny, I imagine.
…It’s like a Christmas carol, I just realized!
Seven Feminazis whining!
Six “cooking columns”!
FIVE PHOTOSHOP EXPERTS!
Four hundred thousand views!
Three whiny posts!
Two resident editors!
And Paul Elam says that sugar’s bad for MEEEEEE!
Eh, could use some work.
Went to the linked article (no, I don’t know why) and at the bottom I found a link to AVFM’s own wiki, which they need to build because Wikipedia is “censoring” them. Maybe they can ask Andy Schlafly for help.
They certainly will if they give said friends and family any meals cooked to Pauly’s recipes.
Well, on my stats the darker blue portions are uniue visitors. The average number of pages the average reader looks at changes month by month; it’s lower when traffic surges. Lately it’s been averaging a bit more than 3 pageviews per visitor; before the surge this year it was higher.
FWIW, Alexa thinks that AVFM gets 6 pageviews per visitor; I don’t know if that’s accurate — Alexa’s estmates for pageviews per visitor for WHTM, for example, are lower than they really are according to my actual stats.
But if he’s getting this many pageviews per visitor his audience (at least for AVFM) is much smaller than mine, though more engaged. By which I mean they’re a relatively small group of fanatics who devote all their time to his site and/or their own online “activism.” That makes sense to me.
As stupid as the rebranding was, it needed it after it killed a whole bunch of people, including possibly Dr Atkins himself.
Also, anybody who believes the “BIOTRUTHS” tripe behind the palaeo diet fails anthropology forever. Not only is the dawn of civilisation defined as the moment ancient humans began farming grains for the first time – no agriculture, no modern civilisation – but palaeolithic hunter-gatherer tribes ate grains anyway.
It’ll be interesting to see how many Atkins/palaeo followers develop colon cancer in 30-50 years’ time. They’re like their own little study on exactly how much red meat raises the risk.
“I’m on the paleo diet. Evidence shows that our paleolithic ancestors ate whatever they could find, and I follow their example as closely as possible.”
Never mind that Paleolithic cultures were not monolithic and the people of 20,000 years ago in say, sab-Saharan Africa would be eating a very different diet than those in Siberia/Northern Asia or the British Isles.
This cooking thing by Elam reminds me of Nick Griffin, ex leader of the far right BNP in the UK who launched a short lived cookery show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK0dQHSuVoc Ite’s
Don’t bother watching, just read the comments.
“I’m on the palaeo diet. I EAT MAMMOTHS!”
I love how this completely ignores the fact that Return of Kings got over 5 million views in October – almost half as many as Jezebel, and is now averaging well over 1 million a month making it by far the largest manosphere website – https://www.quantcast.com/returnofkings.com?country=GLOBAL
Indeed, none of them had only one kind of stone tool…
“I don’t care; get off my bird feeder!”
I’ve seen before this strain of “real food for real men” thinking. It’s typically found among middle-aged middle-class men who lean somewhat towards foodieism while also cultivating the macho attitude.
It’s not that “radical” or much different from what most people eat, but it pretends to be radical. It has the same contrarian spirit you see among various fad dieters and “food skeptics”. It’s like a lazy man’s version of the paleo/Atkins/”high-protein” diet, going against some strawman version of conventionally healthy diet while eating a rather conventional first world diet.
There is much conspiracy thinking on how the official nutrition advice is unfairly prejudiced against fat, especially precious animal fat. Plant oils on the other hand are somehow suspicious. Carbohydrates can be eaten in bulk, but it’s important to get enough protein and fat. Plant protein sources (or at least soy) are also suspicious, probably messing with your manly man hormone metabolism. Veganism is derided as the ultimate madness.
There is much focus on eating “real” food and avoiding highly processed crap, like this was a rare insight. Food additives are bad, whereas salt is good. Low-fat versions of conventional processed meat and dairy products are an abomination. White sugar is unhealthy, but artificial sweeteners are even worse. None of this wisdom is revealed by the official nutrition advice, which is just a crusade against meat and animal fat.