Don't go chasing numbers

My job is to write and edit online news stories, updated by the minute for the third biggest news website in the country. It's very busy keeping on top of everything, and one thing I don't have time to do is keep track of the numbers, or worry about them too much.

Getting the readers' attention and keeping them engaged is apparently what it's all about, but I don't have time to worry about it, when there are 12 more stories to sub in the next two hours. Besides, there are other fine people whose entire job is based around getting the numbers to go up, so they can stress about it. 

When you're putting news stories on the homepage, and deciding what to do, you have to go with your gut. And it usually works. If I think it's interesting, many other people seem to think it's interesting. In the 10 years I've been in the current job, the numbers have exploded, thanks to an influx of resources and some keen editorial judgement.

But the main reason I don't worry too much about it is that I don't trust a fucking thing I ever see on the internet and I think that a lot of the numbers are pure bullshit.

I know this because the stats have gone complete bullshit on this blog, getting hundreds of thousands of hits in the past few weeks. It broke the million hits mark in September, when I was usually happy to get about 10k a month.

I don't get excited about these figures, and am certainly not going to try and leverage it in any way, I'm just going to keep doing my thing. Because it's not people reading my intense thoughts on X-Men or Sapphire and Steel, it's almost certainly AI scrapers, sucking up all the copy I've published and turning the words I write into their general mush.

They're just fucking parasites - literally, because I'll never use their products, so any interaction is strictly one-way - and I can only hope my garbled grammar and general bullshit help break AI just a little bit more.

Numbers are good for management - gotta hit those KPIs - but they mean nothing to me. It might be nice to have a million people reading this stuff, but I'm just happy with the real people like you.