HOW TO BE POPULAR.

By far the most popular article Dr. Boli has printed since moving to this address is the little collection of typographic specimens from the catalogue of Palmer & Rey. This observation confirms what he has always suspected, which is that the Internet would much prefer it if he stopped writing original articles altogether and devoted his pages to other people’s work presented in snippets small enough to qualify as “fair use.” The Internet, however, cannot always have what it wants. Like a spoiled child, it must occasionally be made to eat its vegetables.

Comments

  1. Approximately a third of the comments on that article relate directly to one person complaining that they can’t see images due to Dr. Boli not bothering to ensure his website is easily viewed by people on tiny island nations in the South Seas, unsolicited advice as to how to make the website universal, and unsolicited advice on how people on tiny island nations in the South Seas can employ workarounds to enable them to properly view websites hosted in more civilized nations.

    Another third was the usual nitpicky arguments over etymology and word origins that naturally break out on websites frequented by as many fans of the Humanities as that of this celebrated magazine.

    Most of the rest were references to The Big Lebowski, a cult classic movie whose rabid fans comprise at least a fifth of all internet users, by last count.

    So, the answer is clear: to attract more internet traffic and postings in his comments threads, the good Doctor should post deliberate errors for us to pick apart, whether his or those of works he is quoting, and whenever possible, allude to the sort of movies enjoyed by college-age stoners. This is a popular strategy employed by many other websites, and constantly jockeys with pornography and pictures of cute cats for the top three winning strategies for attracting website traffic.

    • Dr. Boli says:

      It should be noted, by the way, that the number of comments bears little or no relation to the incoming traffic. An article with fifteen comments may have been seen by sixteen readers, whereas an article with no comments at all may be plastered all over Facebook. In the case of Palmer & Rey, the “popularity” of which Dr. Boli spoke was measured by incoming traffic.

      Dr. Boli has literally dozens of readers around the world, and they come from almost every significant country, except China, where the Great Firewall protects Chinese citizens from his corrupting influence. New Zealand ranks between Sweden and Niger in number of readers, so it is obviously a significant market. Dr. Boli hates to see any reader deprived of the full experience of his Magazine; but, on the other hand, he also hates to do extra work. Sometimes one principle wins out, and sometimes the other.

      • Which country do we have to beat – Sweden or Niger?

        jj

        • Dr. Boli says:

          You have already beaten Niger. Sweden will be difficult, because there are some Swedes who are such fanatics that they have in the past requested permission to translate articles from this Magazine into Swedish. (Such permission is always freely granted, of course.) After that, if you pass the Netherlands and Romania, you will enter the top ten. Why Romanians are so keen on this publication is one of those mysteries for which Dr. Boli has no good answer. Dr. Boli can speak only enough Romanian to say “I see a glass of beer under the table” (“Văd un pahar cu bere sub masă,” which is a more useful phrase in Bucharest than you might suppose).

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