International Day of Anticlimax

Well, I have to say that you guys have really upped your sneakiness this year. Last year I had 54 delurkers, this year a mere 19, despite an increase of 161% in my overall visitors. This leads me to conclude that not only are all the extra readers I've picked up this year sneaky, but that their sneakiness has somehow affected my long-term readers. Although I am sad that you just like me less than last year not to have reached the giddy heights of 2011, I keep reminding myself that:

• It is quality not quantity that matters. This was an excellent crop of delurkers.
  
• Most likely the majority of you gave up delurking for Lent.
  

Because graphs are fun, let's break down the blog visitors over the last twenty four hours:

According to Google Analytics, I had 620 unique visitors since yesterday's post. Regular commenters who continue to indulge my dorkiness are sneaky like a cat (i.e. just want to poop outside), the more elusive semi-sneaky raccoons are quite possibly sneaky but on this occasion magnanimous, and the brave squirrelly souls who genuinely delurked are sneaky but obliging. Visitors specifically to the International Day of Delurking post or to my general blog address who did not comment (46%!) are sneaky like almiqui, which have an inner sneakiness so profound that they successfully convinced the world they were extinct. That leaves the 44% of visitors who were to busy looking through my tutorials to partake in shenanigans, and 4% of visitors who are sketchy and came in via questionable search terms. I'm giving the side-eye to you, person who googled 'a girl pooping herself'.

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International Day of Delurking - 2012 edition

The absolute worst thing about being bed-ridden over the weekend was missing the anniversary of International Day of Delurking, my favourite event from last year. It is the day that we celebrate the army of readers-but-not-commenters, and invite them to say hello. Now, enticing a lurker out of their lurkiness (or even their Reader of choice) is never easy but I have recently disabled word verification to ease commenting, and I've prepared a whole new litmus test of my blog visitors' relative sneakiness. Horses, pandas and alligators are so 2011.


Google Image Search declares this cat the most sneaky animal in the world. Google, adjust your algorithms as this cat is not at all sneaky, but forlorn. Ironically, if he was allowed to poop outside, he'd probably be heaps more sneaky as he'd have to find places to do his business without the neighbours getting angry. On International Day of Delurking, the role of Obviously-Not-Sneaky-Cat is played by the regular commenters. Substitute a desire to poop outside with 'comment regularly and be celebrated for it' and we have a direct match.


Now we are into the grey area: the creatures that are allegedly sneaky but Google Image results do not prove beyond a doubt. Occasional commenters who would really prefer to lurk (but might have a question for me), today you play the role of Possibly-Sneaky-Raccoon. For photo-ops and meal-sharing you put on a brave face to hide your sneakiness but your true nature is the raccoon at the back.


At last, we have Legitimately-Sneaky-Squirrel who waits for you to be so preoccupied with capturing the perfect shot with your camera that you won't notice when he sneaks up onto your backpack. With the preponderance of photo-taking angst from me this year, all we need to do is substitute backpack for 'blog' and Sneaky Squirrel becomes the perfect metaphor for Kitschy Coo lurkers. Don't fret, lurkers, I've noticed you on my backpack and love you just the same.

Well, I hope I've done enough anthropomorphising to land me some comments. Regular commenters, do you relate to Not-So-Sneaky-Cat? Occasional commenters, which of the five raccoons best encompasses your nature (or are you best suited to 'raccoon not pictured)? Uber-lurkers, I am giving you one more bonus conversation starter:


The almiqui: super sneaky or super scary? Discuss.

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International Day of Navel Gazing

Has everyone recovered from International Day of Delurking? I admit, I was completely unprepared for the excitement of it all and collapsed exhausted in my bed at the end of the day. Who knew there were so many people in the internet ready and willing to discuss the relative sneakiness of animals? Not me.

As befits the conclusion of any major event, lets look back on International Day of Delurking so that we can learn from it.

Readers of Kitschy Coo (a snapshot of yesterday's visitors):

There were 383 unique visitors yesterday according to Google Analytics. Obviously, it was very tricky to categorise all of you guys into neat categories. But for the purpose of a straight-forward pie chart, regular commentors who just wanted to talk about sneaky animals were sneaky like a horse, genuine / brave / awesome delurkers were sneaky like a panda (by the laws of diminishing sneakiness), people who were visiting useful posts like tutorials may or may not be sneaky but were too busy to go on record, and people looking at the random post* from years ago when I had a 15 minute crush on Josh Peck are undoubtedly sneaky (but also probably disturbed by my creepy creeper-ness). The leaves the 176 visitors who are sneaky like an alligator, who read the delurking post but did not delurk. I applaud you, lurkers, and understand why you might not go on the record and admit you read me.

*Random viewer stats fact: The frankly ridiculous Josh Peck post gets more than 1000 visits a month by people Googling 'Josh Peck' and 'Josh Peck weight loss'. It's my fourth most viewed post ever. I find this 75% hilarious and 25% mortifying.

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International Day of Delurking

After reading an interesting article yesterday about blog commenting, I had every intention of writing a post about stats, engagement and page views to commenting ratios. Obviously, such a titallating post would require a suitable photo to accompany it so I promptly did a Google Image search for 'being sneaky' (i.e. to represent the 95% of you who read without commenting) and found this miniature horse:

'He's being sneaky here with his foot'*.

*Allegedly. To me he's looking previous obvious.

Although I have since found out that official Delurker Day is 12 January, with today being April Fools Day and everyone obviously being in the requisite festive spirit, I would like to invite the lurkers to stick their heads above the parapet and say hello. If you're struggling with what to say, talk about Sneaky Horse's inherent un-sneakiness. Or your theories as to why Lilloet British Columbia is the Number One 'being sneaky' image. This town looks okay to me:


Also, possible delurking comments could pertain to why someone thinks these pandas are sneaky:


Again, this looks like normal panda behaviour to me but I'm no expert. To an untrained eye, completely above the board eating with no sneakiness.


If you would like to delurk by saying, 'Actually, that animal is totally being sneaky' this picture is for you.

So, who is going to delurk? Please can someone do it or I'll have to delete this post and then probably shut down the blog in disgrace.

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