How Sad

One of the things I’ve enjoyed about blogging is finding out persons from all over The United States, in fact, The World have clicked on a posting or a Google/Bing response and found their way here.  I’ve stated many times before that I’m continually amazed anyone stops by – so anyone doing so makes me happy.  Or used to.

I monitor the (meaningless) statistics about the blog – Where are readers located?  How many?  Total views for a 24 hour period.  Then I compare that to what posts I did that given day in an effort to find more titles/subjects appealing to more readers.  It really doesn’t affect my titles or content.  I’m compulsive.  It’s not as if I make any money doing this!

But, the other day, I quickly inserted a blog post blurb regarding the horrific tragedy in Connecticut, as the reports were coming in.  Just the name of the town, Newtown Connecticut was the title.

And I was deeply saddened to see 333 search views in 24 hours!  My average is 163 over the previous 28 days!

Are people so ghoulish that this is what drives them?  Even worse is so-called ‘news’ organizations are so thirsty to ‘get the story first’ they report anything without verifying facts or sources!

It used to be there was a twenty-four hour news cycle, many times longer.  Now it’s minutes; seconds.  No time to verify anything, just get ‘it’ out there!  If it’s wrong, we’ll submit a correction – or not.

And the people who just can’t wait to hear about the latest exploits of Lindsay Lohan or Honey Boo-Boo are waiting like vultures to lap it up.  Or search for it on the Internet.

How sad.