"If I had a dime for every misattributed quote on the internet, I'd have over a million pageviews" -- Salvator Luria
Since the above quote is obviously misattributed, a trend that will no doubt get worse before it gets better [1], it's worth reflecting on how pageviews get counted and the workings of the attention economy.
As of February 10, Synthetic Daisies blog has 1,000,000 page views. One million! Ten to the sixth power! After 17 years, 1 month, and 16 days of posting, then not posting, and finally doing a lot of cross-posting, all while specializing in nothing. All the while not (as far as I know) having been mentioned in the Epstein files [2]. In fact, being skeptical of tech hype and dismayed by scientific racism. And with a nearly unbroken streak of Darwin Day posts since 2009, and many posts on science communication and open access. In terms of volume, this blog peaked in the 2012-2014 period and have declined since, as did a lot of science-oriented blogging enterprises.
In the past 2 years or so, there has been a great uptick in pageviews [3]. I am not sure why, although word on the light cycle trail is that most internet traffic is the product of automation. Nevertheless, a million pageviews of content is something of a milestone. Not least of which is that I can continue my pageview milestone/solar system metaphor. So here it is, "Synthetic Daisies blog" (a.k.a. Voyager 1) leaving the solar system.
As for the attention economy, it does seem that things with deep academic content do not get the numbers of views or followers that shallower content or (especially) conspiracy theories do [4]. In my mind, this is baked in: for YouTube content, this can be demonstrated. So much for monetization! Although revisiting an early post on the arcanocracy might address some of this.
References:
[1] Garry et.al (2024). Large language models (LLMs) and the institutionalization of misinformation. Trends in Cognitive Science, 28(12), 1078-1088.
[2] We really need to revisit the relationship between Epstein, John Brockman, Adam Bly, and the popular science of late 2000s vintage. I was a big fan of Seed Magazine and Edge.org, which were apparently edgy in more ways than one. Of course, I never saw any of that fame and fortune.
[3] The 500,000 pageviews milestone was reached in December of 2022.
[4] While a lot of this is platform-dependent, some of this is affinity scam dependent. See Joe Rogan and his relationship with Spotify.
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