Stop Searching For Elmo!

Last year, I wrote a silly post about Elmo, about how I had not realized how controversial Sesame Street actually is. Hadn't considered how Cookie Monster thwarts our every attempt to teach our children good nutrition habits. Hadn't recognized the "partnership" between Ernie and Bert. Hadn't realized that people actually hate Elmo.

In the past few days, however, I've started feeling a certain antipathy towards him myself.

Apparently, the image I grabbed and put on my blog for that post has moved into a position of prominence in the Google Images search. A gazillion and a half people have been clicking on that 6 month old post because they are searching for a picture of Elmo and they land on And I'll Raise You Five.

My stat counter has been going bonkers.

At first, I was elated. Wow! So many visitors! I must be even more eloquent than I imagine! I'm so impressed with myself! (Given another of my antipathies, this one for the exclamation point, that's sayin' somethin'.)

But do these gazillion new people click on anything else? Nope. They probably spend half a second on my blog, long enough for them to think Good Good, anyone and everyone has a blog these days, and this crap is not what I'm searching for, and then they move on. No comments. No piqued interest leading them to other pages, to more compelling posts. No uptick in my small band of followers.

Elmo is not sharing the love. Many, many people search for him, find me, and leave me in their dust. They love him enough to search; they do not love me enough to stay for awhile.

My stat counter is completely unreliable now, since the vast majority of my hits are really hits for Elmo. I can't even get excited about the climb in numbers; Elmo has rendered it meaningless.

Stop searching for Elmo people!

And no, I am NOT linking to that earlier Elmo post, because half of the blog-reading world has already read it and I'm sick to death of it.

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