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

On the subject of first visits/posts: I’d actually been lurking on and off for years (first found it after ranting angrily to Uncle Google about hearing “TITS OR GTFO” every time I tried to game online – even back in the Manboobz days, it was the first result), but yeah, it was the #GamerGit bullshit finally convinced me to come out of the shadows. Probably not what they wanted to happen, but hey, they didn’t want Intel to pledge $300 mil to fighting misogyny in STEM either!

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

And on the subject of animals: I love all animals except for cockroaches and… Goats. Kids are adorable, but adult goats are vicious bastards. =P I’ve had so many weird pets, from spiders to a pelican, but I’ll never keep another goat.

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

@gilshaloscomment image

grumpyoldnurse
9 years ago

Also love Lovecraft! Yes, it’s problematic, and yes, he sounded like a semi-scary weirdo in his private life, but, DAMN!, could he write! And, his worlds were so complete! Genius!

Buttercup Q. Skullpants
Buttercup Q. Skullpants
9 years ago

The term for that is ‘Rolling Coal’, people who deliberately de-tune diesel engines to belch smoke in a grand show of ‘You can’t tell me what to do!’

Wow, the stupid. It burns. Literally. They’re spending $5,000 to modify their $45,000 penis exoskeleton in a way that worsens its performance and makes them pay more at the pump, all so they can blow toxic smoke at libruls in Priuses.

If Obama announced he was against eating yellow snow, they’d be outside following their hound dogs around with a shovel.

Re: the privacy error, that sounds like your browser is alerting you to a mismatch between the URL you’re connected to and its security level. For example, if you log into https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com, the browser discovers that this isn’t actually a secure site, so it crosses off the “https” and warns you that it’s not a private connection. Try navigating to WHTM without the “https” part and see if it still gives you the warning. (Also check that your system time/date are correct, because that can mess up your certificate validation as well.)

Lea
Lea
9 years ago

I love it when the threads here stop being about horrible people and start being about pleasant things like music, food, good sex, friendship, coping and critters. I especially love it when a troll enters a thread, drops a turd and a page and a half later the commenters are like, “Wait…did somebody say some stupid awful shit while we were having fun?”

Paul the bitter, lying, butt pimple doesn’t understand why we might need a cute animal break once in a while after reading his rape and woman beating fantasies because the stuff he gets off on and tries to convince other men to do makes most people want to flush their brains out with bleach. He doesn’t get it because he doesn’t have enough empathy to fill a thimble.

I’ll cuddle all the critters with fewer than 6 legs.

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

If Obama announced he was against eating yellow snow, they’d be outside following their hound dogs around with a shovel.

Prez, get on this!

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

@Lea

I also suspect that Paulie has no legitimate hobbies like cooking (oh yeah, we know that for certain), literature, Orgami, or really anything joyful outside of loathing half the human race and large portions of the rest of it who do not loathe half the human race. He doesn’t understand there is anything else to which his brain (hypothetical) may escape.

gilshalos
9 years ago

Cacodaemoniacal.

What more can I say 🙂

gilshalos
9 years ago

Oh yes! Here’s what I can say. 4 years of Latin at High School, 2 at Uni, and 2 years of classical Greek at Uni. That 🙂

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

Salve, gilshalos! Quid agis?

gilshalos
9 years ago

Salve Cassie’sMD Legi. Quid de te?

gilshalos
9 years ago

Uh..Lation was 24 years back. Hope I didn’t get that wrong

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

Well, my 3 years of Latin was around 20 years. I did start doing hobbyist Latin a few years ago and really got up to a good level–then fell off. I really want to make it a serious hobby pursuit again when I have more time (snort, chuckle).

Sic dixit, sic scripsi, sic semper fuerat.

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

*20 years back, I mean.

thebewilderness
thebewilderness
9 years ago

Can’t you just see PaulELAM reading that post about page rank over and over every day steaming and fuming and resisting the temptation to respond, thinking how many hits he will drive to David if he responds to that post? Day after day of fuming, stressing, fretting, writing and rewriting a response. hahahahaha

jfwlucy
9 years ago

David Futrelle, I adore you!

Nequam
Nequam
9 years ago

If Obama announced he was against eating yellow snow, they’d be outside following their hound dogs around with a shovel.

Some days I think of starting a viral story that cleaning your toilet with bleach AND ammonia makes Greens and Michelle Obama cry.

It’d be one way of thinning the herd at any rate.

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

If anyone needs proof: yeah somebody did this…
http://downtrend.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Prius-Repellent.jpg

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

How about this?
http://wwwgreeneridealcom.c.presscdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/diesel-life.jpg
Yeah, I think I’m starting to hate the planet as well… because it has the person who made this living on it.

Falconer
9 years ago

Some people never outgrew their toddler phase, did they?

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

Some people never outgrew their toddler phase, did they?

As in, wallowing in their own excrement and smiling about it? Pretty much.

alaisvex
alaisvex
9 years ago

Wait. What if you drive a Prius because you like getting 50 miles to the gallon, rarely have to go to the gas station, and greatly reducing your fuel budget? Or is saving money anti-conservative all of a sudden?

alaisvex
alaisvex
9 years ago

Dammit! Having, not have.

Anyway, I’d also like to point out that Priuses aren’t actually small cars. They have tons of storage space and are actually a great deal roomier than many other sedans.

Puddleglum
9 years ago

Lol, Paulie’s response is so predictable. “Lies! Lies, I tell you! Believe me, it’s all lies!’

re: Lovecraft – I’ve been reading Cherie Priest’s Maplecroft and it’s awesome. Also, listening nightly to Welcome to Night Vale. Also very awesome (and I’m almost caught up!).

re: design site. I love it, thanks!

re: mods to vehicles to make them belch. You just know the same people who do this to their vehicles (and pay extra in gas, for the mods themselves *and* for the garage bills that the strain/wear the unnecessary mods cause on the engine) also believe firmly in good fiscal management. *headdesk*