....LMB: "Behind the Scenes"....

February 13, 2003

I've got a question for some of you long-time bloggers: after a long amount of time passes, do you get to a point where you check your website stats and referral logs obsessively?

Seriously, just about every day I feel compelled to look and see how many hits and pageviews I got, and see if any people reached my blog from a link on a new website. I guess I like seeing what looks like progress: more people visit every month, and more and more people are liking my work enough that the add me to their pile o' links.

But the referral page (when you click on a link that takes you to a page on my site, my web server company makes a note of the web address where you clicked, and gives me a list of those addresses) shows me some interesting things lately.

1) I got over 100 hits from www.iaea.org. That's the International Atomic Energy Agency, one of the entities responsible for disarming Iraq and North Korea of their (alleged) nuclear weapons. I don't see any links to me from their page, so I theorize that my site was visited by someone within the IAEA itself. I'd like to think that a copy of my altered satellite photo is haning up on a bulletin board at IAEA headquarters.

2) Got over 100 hits from the Free Republic forums, aimed at my post about Viggo Mortensen's anti-war stance during a Charlie Rose interview. The FR messageboards are absolutely insane with mean-spirited, vitriolic conservatism, featuring loads of that style of right-wing humor in which talk about the death and torture of liberals is just good-natured fun (cuz liberals are traitors to America, it's okay to poke a little murderous fun).

Anyhow, the FReepers (as Free Republic users like to call themselves) are trying to organize a boycott of movies and entertainment featuring artists who have spoken out against the war. Which is their right, I suppose, but still a little goofy. Now that some Freepers have found my site, I anticipate angry, hate-filled comments to go up by a factor of four.

3) Apparently, LMB is the subject for a college writing class' homework assignment (Heh, their professor apologizes for my "salty language"). This obviously means that I've become mainstream, and you all should go find yourself a hipper, more underground site to visit (or at least start telling people that I used to be good, but that all my albums after "Bleach" have sucked). Note to the college kids: the internet looks back. Today's assignment: write an article about me writing about you writing about me without your brain exploding.

And while on the subject of referrals, I should mention this.

Apparently, advertisers have devised a new gimmick by somehow faking a link to a person's site so that it shows up in their list of referring sites. The curious reader then clicks on the fake referrer to see who linked to them, only to find an advertisement, usually for porn sites. I discovered this phenomenon some weeks back, wondering why quiveringfuckholes.com would be linking to my rants on media and politics.

Well, that's enough weird meta-bloggery for now.

Posted by Jake at 11:54 PM
Comments

Yeah...I get a lot of hits from the International Atomic Energy Agency, too. Go figure.

Posted by: acline at February 14, 2003 11:04 AM

Don't look at your stats. Like you suggest, it can become an obsession.

Posted by: dack at February 14, 2003 12:02 PM

Let's say you're already obsessed. Then what?

Posted by: Jake at February 14, 2003 01:17 PM

hookers. they should take your mind off your stats. plus, there's probably 10 of them on sunset right now. and it's a nice day for a walk.

Posted by: jeremy at February 14, 2003 02:33 PM

But keep in mind that each and every one of us is prone to terrorism every second of the day these days, even if we just want to "hook" up. If commingling with the oldest trade, always wear duct tape and several membranes of poly. Also, batteries are helpful.

Posted by: shawn at February 14, 2003 04:57 PM
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Lying Media Bastards is both a radio show and website. The show airs Mondays 2-4pm PST on KillRadio.org, and couples excellent music with angry news commentary. And the website, well, you're looking at it.

Both projects focus on our media-marinated world, political lies, corporate tyranny, and the folks fighting the good fight against these monsters.

All brought to you by Jake Sexton, The Most Beloved Man in America ®.


contact: jake+at+lyingmediabastards.com

Media News

November 16, 2004

Tales of Media Woe

Senate May Ram Copyright Bill- one of the most depressing stories of the day that didn't involve death or bombs. It's the music and movie industries' wet dream. It criminalizes peer-to-peer software makers, allows the government to file civil lawsuits on behalf of these media industries, and eliminates fair use. Fair use is the idea that I can use a snippet of a copyrighted work for educational, political, or satirical purposes, without getting permission from the copyright-holder first.

And most tellingly, the bill legalizes technology that would automatically skip over "obejctionable content" (i.e. sex and violence) in a DVD, but bans devices that would automatically skip over commericals. This is a blatant, blatant, blatant gift to the movie industry. Fuck the movie industry, fuck the music industry, fuck the Senate.

Music industry aims to send in radio cops- the recording industry says that you're not allowed to record songs off the radio, be it real radio or internet radio. And now they're working on preventing you from recording songs off internet radio through a mixture of law and technological repression (although I imagine their techno-fixes will get hacked pretty quickly).

The shocking truth about the FCC: Censorship by the tyranny of the few- blogger Jeff Jarvis discovers that the recent $1.2 million FCC fine against a sex scene in Fox's "Married By America" TV show was not levied because hundreds of people wrote the FCC and complained. It was not because 159 people wrote in and complained (which is the FCC's current rationale). No, thanks to Jarvis' FOIA request, we find that only 23 people (of the show's several million viewers) wrote in and complained. On top of that, he finds that 21 of those letters were just copy-and-paste email jobs that some people attached their names to. Jarvis then spins this a bit by saying that "only 3" people actually wrote letters to the FCC, which is misleading but technically true. So somewhere between 3 and 23 angry people can determine what you can't see on television. Good to know.

Reuters Union Considers Striking Over Layoffs- will a strike by such a major newswire service impact the rest of the world's media?

Pentagon Starts Work On War Internet- the US military is talking about the creation of a global, wireless, satellite-aided computer network for use in battle. I think I saw a movie about this once...

Conservative host returns to the air after week suspension for using racial slur- Houston radio talk show host (and somtime Rush Limbaugh substitute) Mark Belling referred to Mexican-Americans as "wetbacks" on his show. He was suspended for a couple of weeks, and then submitted a written apology for the racial slur to a local newspaper. But he seems to be using the slur and its surrounding controversy to boost his conservative cred with his listeners.

Stay Tuned for Nudes- Cleveland TV news anchor Sharon Reed aired a story about artist Spencer Tunick, who uses large numbers of naked volunteers in his installations and photographs. The news report will be unique in that it will not blur or black-out the usual naughty bits. The story will air late at night, when it's allegedly okay with the FCC if you broadcast "indecent" material. The author of this article doesn't seem to notice that Reed first claims that this report is a publicity stunt, but then claims it's a protest against FCC repression. I'd like to think it's the latter, but I'm not that much of a sucker.

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