I don’t wanna creep anybody out.
Seriously, I think paranoia is as big a problem as anybody. And I don’t want to prop up anyone’s fears about how intrusive and scary the modern world can be.
What I do want to do is totally geek out about where Hubris readers are. The computer doesn’t tell me who you are, but it tells me where. (If I was the gov’ment, it might tell me who you are and what you’re up to, but I’m not the gov’ment, and you can keep that junk to yourself, thank you VERY much.)
So anyhow, I’m still learning all this cool stuff that computers do, and I was looking at the statistics for Hubris. There’s a little map that you can click on, and that leads to bigger maps of smaller places until you get a country isolated with little dots. It looks like one of those movie-prop displays where there are aliens or bombs or viruses being watched because there are little circles all over cities where there are Hubris readers. Creepy, huh? I’m old enough to think that’s just amazing.
And today, I fiddled around, finding cities where readers took a few minutes to look at multiple pages on the site, and either returned to look again and again on other days or told friends who came to look- all over the past month.
I wanted to say, “Hi!”
I wanted to greet everyone in their own language, but as you’ve already read Hubris in English, “Hi” ought to get the job done in this case, right?
So “Hi” to readers in:
Shibuya, Japan
Centurion, South Africa
Temuco, Chile
Salamanka, Spain
Kokkola, Finland
Ashquelon, Israel
Masqat, Oman
Mandaluyong, Phillipines
I’m too lazy to keep looking up each dot, and picking and choosing which ones sound extra cool, so that’s enough for today.
I’ll do this again sometime, so if your town’s not here… well, keep coming back. The bigger the blip in the stats, the more I go “Wow! Look at THAT! What a cool place to be, and somebody there is reading Hubris!” Next time, maybe I’ll figure out a theme, or stick to primarily English-speaking countries, or just towns that start with ‘T’ or something. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
Greetings from Barbados, land of good surfing, average mountain biking and many other non-ice-related outdoor sports.
I can’t help thinking of the old “Hee Haw Salutes…population–” bit as well as Garry Shandling’s “…We salute you!” line from his show.
I very nearly did the “Saaaaa-Lute!” line from Hee-Haw, but as most people I talk to these days have little or absolutely NO memory of Hee-Haw, I gave it a miss.
Won- I’ma look up the Barbados on the analytics and see how many times you guys have been pinging the map.