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#gamergate a voice for men antifeminism evil fat fatties gross incompetence gullibility imaginary backwards land irony alert kitties lying liars misogyny MRA none dare call it conspiracy paul elam

Unable to accept that my site's been getting more traffic than his, AVFM's Paul Elam takes a swim in denial

This cat: Not impressed by Paul Elam's obvious bullshit
This cat: Not impressed by Paul Elam’s obvious bullshit

The first stage of grief, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross famously postulated, is denial.

So it’s hardly surprising that Paul Elam and his gang of flunkies and fans at A Voice for Men have responded to the news that my site is besting AVFM in traffic by trying to claim that my traffic is somehow … fake.

Elam’s “evidence” for this assertion? He poked around my site for a few minutes and couldn’t find any posts that felt really “viral” to him.

He explained his, er, logic in a post yesterday. (You’ll have to excuse his terrible prose; he’s apparently running out of ways to call me fat.)

The gynecomastia plagued mammoth hunter’s sudden, meteoric rise into alleged relevance can only be explained by one thing. There must have been a stratospherically viral article (usually meaning more than two paragraphs) penned by the Wizard of Wallow that must have been picked up by every major media outlet in the mainstream.

Trouble is, we could not find it. A complete search of his website for something that coincided with his liftoff into the upper echelons of Alexa rankings, only turned up more of his usual fare. Quote mining, distortions, lies, poorly written snark and hundreds of comments, most of which have nothing to do with the OP and everything to do with kittens.

I’m not sure how one is supposed to be able to tell how much traffic a post has generated just by looking at it; it’s a bit like trying to tell how fast a car can go by looking at it parked.

But using some methodology of his own, apparently based not so much on what is true as on what he desperately wants to be true, he concludes that I bought the traffic using some of that sweet sweet cash I apparently get from the Femilluminati overladies.

So, that leaves us with only one other conclusion about David’s strut-worthy presence on Alexa. He paid for it. Yes, for those who cannot create real traffic, it can be purchased. Of course, purchasing a fake Alexa ranking is, well, fake. But what better tool for web presence could there ever be for a fake writer, with fake ideas waging a fake war against fake enemies for the approval of fake allies?

Also, I’m a big fan of fried chicken. (How did he know?)

A fake Alexa ranking fits on David Futrelle like a day old bucket of fried chicken fits in his lap . And it will probably last about as long given it requires regular financial maintenance.

Elam’s preoccupation with Alexa is a little weird. I didn’t even mention Alexa in my post comparing my traffic to his. Alexa’s numbers for my site and his are based on estimates — extimates that I’m pretty sure are something less-than-reliable, at least when it comes to my site.

No, the reason I know that I’m getting more traffic than A Voice for Men – or at least that I was getting more when I wrote my post on the subject – has nothing to do with Alexa rankings. It’s because Elam posted a screenshot of his actual traffic stats. Which I was able to compare to the traffic stats I get directly from WordPress. (You can see my screenshot and his in my post om the subject.)

The closest thing to “evidence” Elam has to back up his false accusation that my traffic is “fake” is based on something called Google PageRank, a zero-to-ten ranking that provides at least a rough representation of a site’s importance in the internet world. (Zero is totally obscure; ten means you’re as popular as Google.) Unfortunately, Elam’s internet research skills leave something to be desired, and his “evidence” isn’t actually evidence of anything real.

Elam reports that when he typed his site’s url into a site that tracks PageRank it got a rating of 5. He typed WeHuntedTheMammoth.com into the same page and it gets a PageRank of … zero.

Which would be pretty damning, except that it’s meaningless.

You see, the real URL for this blog is manboobz.wordpress.com; that’s the URL that WeHuntedTheMammoth.com redirects you to. And if you type manboobz.wordpress.com into that same PageRank site that Elam used, you’ll see that my site has a Google PageRank of … 4, pretty close to that of AVFM.

Seriously, Paul, try it yourself if you don’t believe me.

So, no, Paul, I didn’t buy traffic or whatever it is you think I did to get “fake” traffic for my “fake” writing.

You want to know the real secret behind the increased traffic to my site? Well. I don’t know if you realized it, Paul, but last year was kind of a breakout year for online misogyny. You remember that whole GamerGate thing? I wrote a lot about that, including a number of posts that collected together a lot of information that other people found useful.

If you look at my most-read posts from the past year – here, here and here – you can see that a lot of people did in fact find them useful: each one was shared on Twitter and Facebook literally thousands of times, as you can see by scrolling down to the bottom of each post. (Or did I fake those too?)

Also, I started writing more than one post a day. All else being equal, more posts means more traffic.

The flipside is that all this misogyny and all this writing kind of burned me out, and I’ve been taking a bit of a breather for the last few weeks, writing fewer posts and taking some days off. So my traffic has slowed a bit. Heck, my traffic may have dropped back down to AVFM levels.

But I’m not worried, Paul. As long as terrible and ridiculous people like you keep saying and doing terrible, ridiculous things, I’m not going to run out of things to write about. And as long as people are interested in hearing about people like you, it seems likely that I’ll continue to get enough traffic to reduce you to tooth-grinding rage.

I can only hope you’re able to work y0ur way through the other stages of grief until you finally reach acceptance. Because right now your desperation is so obvious it can probably be seen from space. It’s not a good look for you.

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hippodameia8527
hippodameia8527
9 years ago

Oh how I hope Paul keeps whining.

Marc-André
9 years ago

Oh gosh! Good luck 🙂

Ellesar
9 years ago

Doesn’t Elam realise why there are so many kittens on WHTM? That brain bleach is a frequent necessity when one is exposed to the likes of Elam and other ghastly manospherians!

davidknewton
davidknewton
9 years ago

What an absolute raging bastard. Thank you for putting yourself out at the front like this – I can only imagine how exhausting it is having to wade through it daily and somehow make it funny. It’s great to know that your commentary on these people is so visible.

Miss Andry
9 years ago

A fake Alexa ranking fits on David Futrelle like a day old bucket of fried chicken fits in his lap. And it will probably last about as long given it requires regular financial maintenance.

So says “civil rights” champion Paul Elam. I’m still amazed this guy wants to be taken seriously. That he once claimed his goals and those of the SPLC were not too different takes my breath away, and for all the wrong reasons.

d
d
9 years ago
Fnoicby
Fnoicby
9 years ago

Eliot Rodger brought me here, as I’m sure it did some others. I’ve noticed a bunch of newbies recently too, probably partly due to gamer gate. Seems like everyone in the mainstream media is talking about feminism these days.

M. the Social Justice Ranger
M. the Social Justice Ranger
9 years ago

Y’know… If Aptronym is really that interested your pageviews, maybe he and his army of trolls could try not adding to said pageviews by obsessively stalking the site?

emilygoddess - MOD
emilygoddess - MOD
9 years ago

I’ve been waiting for this since you made the original post, and Paulie did not disappoint!

Ellesar
9 years ago

Fnoicby – I realised about 7 years ago that things were WORSE for young women then, than they had been in my youth (70s 80s). There was a HUGE backlash to feminism in the 90s, in the UK with the emergence of ‘lad culture’ and many progressions took a step back. I am glad to see this re-emergence, as young women really are treated like crap now.

Faint Praise
Faint Praise
9 years ago

Wow, in case it wasn’t delicious enough that your traffic outranked his.

Merus
Merus
9 years ago

Yeah, that big spike seemed to come from Elliot Rodger, and hey looks here’s a guy who’s already keeping tabs on the sick little groups Rodger was a part of.

And then Gamergate, where the toxicity in video games (who have just a ton of people) finally got bad and got organised, and hey here’s a guy that’s willing to dig through the very worst 4chan has to offer. Video game sites have someone to link to demonstrate just how bad it got.

Paul’s just not that smart a man.

Lea
Lea
9 years ago

Blatantly claims that page hits can and have been bought

Does not explain the method by which that can be accomplished

Does not provide evidence to support his claim

Throws in some ad homs in the form of body shaming

His opinion of his followers’ integrity and intelligence would be insulting to them if it wasn’t so spot on.

Cry moar, Paul. Maybe if you scream, kick and hold your breath your lies will become reality.

Also, if David can by higher stats then Paul can too. So his point is what?

Lea
Lea
9 years ago

It’s as if feminism isn’t over like Paul keeps claiming.

Then again, his claim is that we run everything and simultaneously have become irrelevant. He never made sense to begin with.

isidore13
isidore13
9 years ago

Lea, nooo, we DO run everything, but thanks to the activism of the manosphere by just… you know… sitting on their asses whining about not being allowed to do whatever the fuck they want anymore, they will overthrow the manginas and feminists who totally control everything!

isidore13
isidore13
9 years ago

I hope you’re getting some much-needed mental and emotional recovery, David 🙂

Cassie's Major Domo
Cassie's Major Domo
9 years ago

But what better tool for web presence could there ever be for a fake writer, with fake ideas waging a fake war against fake enemies for the approval of fake allies?

Paul wins “This Week in Projection”… again.

weirwoodtreehugger
9 years ago

So, Paul has been lurking in the comments and reading our cat talk? Ew. Maybe Woody really was him!

magnesium
magnesium
9 years ago

Poor Paul. He’s upset because he’s old news. The young fella’s of GamerGate have been stealing his precious attention by being louder (and probably better organized) misogynists than he can muster in his old age. Time to retire, Paul. Let your feMRA fangirls take over. They basically do all the work for you now, anyways.

Mercy
Mercy
9 years ago

*blinkblink* Don’t hundreds of comments per post in themselves say something fairly definite about the popularity of the posts, or at least the number of times posts have been loaded? Logic says….

(tangent: my iPad autocorrected “something” to “typos methane”)

kirbywarp
kirbywarp
9 years ago

@Mercy:

Well, if someone in the comments of Elam’s post can look at the regional traffic breakdown for wehuntedthemammoth and conclude that the 38% from Brazil is coming from a single person… Logic has no power here.

Falconer
9 years ago

@Mercy: Volume of comments doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe a persistent troll comes and squats on the thread for an evening, or we have one of several arguments that don’t seem to ever die, and everybody posts lots of comments. It is a rare thread that busts 1,000 comments, though.

mildlymagnificent
9 years ago

So. Paulie looks enough to know that we put up lots of brain bleach kitties and other furrinati, but can’t read well enough to know why we feel the need for brain bleach.

What he would make of the discussions on bra sizes or makeup I really don’t want to know. Though it wouldn’t do any harm for him to learn number ninja.

quantumscale
9 years ago

Don’t forget that we’re all just cats in a David suit, so all the commenters are really one person.

isidore13
isidore13
9 years ago

quantumscale, how awesome would that be?! we’d have the power of teleportation!

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