Sunday, August 12, 2012

Seeing Reddit

WTF! Those were my exact words. I looked at my sitemeter yesterday afternoon and it said 230 something visits today, 111 in the last hour. WTF. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. Yep. That's what is said. WTF? Page after page said these visitors to my little garden blog were coming from http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/.

I had heard of Reddit as some hot new site. I didn't know what it was. Obviously I had been linked to there. But for what? I certainly had my suspicions.

Red-popping-corn.


























Guy bins a live animal stuck on a glue trap. Bin is now used as a verb. How cool. My Australian interlocutor was back at it. He joined Reddit just to post a link to my blog. Still fishing for outrage. I was very afraid to look in my email inbox. At that point in the day it was already 150 plus over my normal traffic.

The hits kept coming fast and furious and by the end of the night 400 plus extra people had visited my little garden blog and the post Give The PETA What They Want. I was very afraid to look in my email inbox.

When I did, nothing was there. Nothing. Not a single comment. The post at Reddit didn't have a single comment. WTF? These Reddit people are a different breed of animal.

Bumblebees buzz in to become stupefied on the red Angelica gigas.


























After 600 plus visits to my little garden blog from Reddit, the torrent has slowed to a trickle in just over 24 hours. Internet fame is decidedly brief. It must be the internet equivalent of a flash mob. Out of all that I only got 3 comments. Bless you people. Two were positive, don't let them get you down, both posted and one was an anonymous negative, you're an evil prick, not posted.

My poor interlocutor.

Red Castor Bean should grow quite well in Australia. The seeds make a very soothing tea ...


























I spent a most pleasant day with a lovely man in a garden where everything growing was red.

Reddit. Reddit.

8 comments:

Janet, The Queen of Seaford said...

The reds reminds me of Christopher Mello's millet (which I neglected to get a piece of)..love the bold red colors.
So Reddit has given you a lot of traffic? Interesting. I Just added Sitemeter to my blog, used the Blogger stats before, just curious about what it will tell me traffic wise.

Dianne said...

Yep,those.castor.beans.are.great!

Christopher C. NC said...

Janet if you email me - blog name at gmail - with an address I can send you some of Christopher's millet seed. I have a bunch sitting on the front porch. That's where I was today.

Yea all that traffic got me thinking Reddit might be good for people who want more traffic. It is a forum that seems to have many topics. I get a twitter brevity vibe from the place though.

Dianne I hope my poor interlocutor is done in for now.

Lola said...

Love the reds. How tall does your millet get? Castor beans, saw some up the street/thought they were cool.
Thought all this other stuff was over. Maybe that is why my mail to you came back undeliverable.

Christopher C. NC said...

Lola the millet gets about 3 feet tall I think. You must have a missed letter, space, extra period or something in my email address. Look at it close.

Steven said...

It's hard to get comments in Reddit unless the source picture is from a hugely watched blog or equivalent. There's another one with glue traps, lots of comments saying how bad they are, including some pretty ugly stories. So yeah, the general consensus is that glue traps = bad. I'm inclined to agree:

http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/y1vpb/my_friend_set_a_glue_trap_to_catch_a_mouse_he/

Lisa at Greenbow said...

Love seeing all the reds in your garden. I like red.

Christopher C. NC said...

Steven is that your real name? Could you tell us what your Reddit name is so I can check to see how long and how active a member of that community you have been before I give your comment analysis any merit?

The link you gave and the other glue trap thread with the most comments have snakes on the glue trap. Both link to a picture on an image hosting service. Unless you consider an image hosting service a popular site these highly commented threads only link to an image and are not "from a hugely watched blog or equivalent."

A search for glue traps at Reddit turns up half a dozen posts that are pure snark with the basic premise being,"Here we go again with the glue traps. Ugh!"

Mr. Halo's one and only post at Reddit linking to me bumps right up against the posted rules at the forum.

*No politics / posts with political implications - Includes Activism, Call for public outcry etc.

and

*Personal information is not allowed and will be removed, repeat offenders banned.

You can make a case that my blog is personal information as well as a personal space.

I tend to think the community at Reddit is not responding based more on the appropriate community standards posted in and enforced in the forum. All I can say is thank you people of Reddit for not filling my inbox with vulgarities, name calling and manufactured outrage.

Now Steven is that your real name? What is your name at Reddit? I'll have to take your analysis of things with a big grain of salt.