Deep-diving into my blog stats

Now that I'm getting the hang of actually writing blog posts again, I'm trying to re-familiarize myself with all the other aspects of blogging. I already played around with the template and widgets (essentially changing the entire look of this blog), so I know I retained SOME knowledge on how to work dis biiiitch.

Me, clearly having the time of my life analyzing my blog stats and writing this post

Something I used to obsess over as a teen were the statistics my blog used to bring in. Daily, monthly, weekly, yearly - I was on it all. When my blog first reached 100,000 unique hits I was so stoked. Looking at the locations people were coming in from, the search terms that brought them in, the highest viewed posts and the times of day traffic was most - it was all really exciting.

So, I decided to have a look at all of that again. I know that with me literally posting nothing since the past four years, the stats would be quite different from when I used to check them before. Being brave, I went straight into All-Time.

As you can see, the highest ever traffic on my blog was in the 2010-2012 range. This makes sense, because I was most active around this time, and so was literally everyone else on Blogger. People used to post MULTIPLE times a day. I know that's literally unheard of in this day and age... but yeah. Blogger used to be a LIT party back then. My posts from 2010 are so freaking cringey. In fact, let me see if I can dig up something from that prehistoric era.

WOW, LET'S PRETEND THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN

Um... back to the stats. Not sure why the spike in 2014 occurred (unless I underestimated the interest in the one-off post about my 20th birthday).

Let's take a look at where all these views are actually from.

Interesting. Loads of traffic from my homeboys in Pakistan and India. I'm pretty sure all the hits from UAE are me alone LOL. I'm surprised to see China and Russia on the list... But it's the internet, so anything is possible.

So how did all these people actually get here?

Looks about normal. People coming in from Google, Twitter, typing in the URL.... wait.

This caught my interest. 800 hits from a website called Kids Learn To Blog. Did someone.... is my blog....

I went to investigate.

Upon clicking the link, I was taken to a cute little website that was designed for kids, filled with posts on how to start/maintain a blog. That shit is actually so nice - it makes my heart warm that someone's out there looking out for kids who need help to set up their own space online. But what really surprised me was this...

NO WAY. EXAMPLES? Best kids blogs? SUBLIME???? Yo, that's a top tier compliment. You can't just throw around a word like 'sublime'.

Scrolled a little more and...

Click on the image to go to the page and see it for yourself!

ASDFGHJKL THAT'S ME!!!!!! When I saw this, I was literally SHOOK. First of all, even making a list on a random part of the internet is a big deal for me. But to actually have a BLURB about my blog... like... someone actually summarized my blog for a list. Someone said I had INGENUITY. Someone actually thought I was worthy enough to be a BEST KID BLOG.

((We're just gonna ignore the fact that I never wrote anything targeted towards kids.... okay? We're also going to ignore that I never had a favourite 'word of the week'....))

To think that almost 900 people visited my blog because it was listed as a 'Best Kid Blog' on some website (realistically, only eight or so must have actually shown any interest in the contents of it after clicking hahaha).... So so cool.

After feeling really good about myself for this achievement (for doing absolutely nothing except word vomit about my life), I thought to seek out the person who actually deemed me worthy of this list. Not hard considering she was marked as the author of the post.

I present to you...

Dr. Patricia, whoever you are... thanks girl.

Aaaaand that conducts my deep-dive. I really went down a rabbit hole there, and ended up finding out a lot more about my blog than I expected. I don't know what to do with all this information though. A part of me wants to contact Dr. Patricia and thank her for deeming me worthy of such a list (which actually does have other, really cool blogs on it as well btw)... But a part of me is scared that if I contact her, she'll see the state of my blog now and take it off her list. LOL.

Should I do more online deep-dives in other areas of my blog-related life? I am actually starting to think that it would be a really good idea to dig out some gems from the past. Or, it could end up in disaster. Either way, it would be pretty entertaining!

See you really soon,

Furree

A peek into my 'other messages' folder

Greetings!

I'm sure most of you are familiar with Facebook. If you've ever used it in your life, you'll know all about sending and receiving private messages on it. And if you've spent enough time in your messages folder, you'll know about the strange, shady and embarrassing area that no one voluntarily treads upon:

The 'OTHER MESSAGES'.

Surprisingly, not many people are aware of this particular phenomenon. I myself didn't discover this nifty little mini-horror section of Facebook till around last year. The other messages folder is basically the thing you see here:

That's a screenshot of my inbox with the arrow pointing to how you can get into your 'other messages' section.

I honestly wish I had never come across this monstrosity.

I remember the day it happened. I was browsing Facebook through my phone, looking for an old message a friend had sent me. Instead of 'older messages' I accidentally hit 'other messages'. I had previously never even taken that link's existence into consideration. I thought it was just an extension of older messages. Little did I know of the terrible things it contained...

I clicked the link. Suddenly, the number of unread messages I had were 56. FIFTY SIX? I had never had so many unread messages in my life. I was thoroughly confused. Imagine how my confusion increased when I saw this message at the very top:

All I could think of was, 'what the hell is this shit?' As I scrolled further and read the utter ridiculousness in there, it dawned upon me that I was not in the 'older messages' section - rather, this alien place was called 'other' and had some extremely disturbing content that I hadn't come across in the longest time. Here are some gems I have salvaged from that pit of evil:

 

I kind of feel sorry for this guy.

This stuff is even scarier than your average neighborhood murder. In fact, I think there was a horror movie based on this bundle of eyesores:

I'M SORRY I JUST HAD TO DO IT OKAY

Depending on your privacy settings, messages that go into your 'other' folder are usually those which are sent to you by people whom you don't have any mutual friends with. Anyone inboxing you with a mutual friend will probably have their message turn up on your inbox, just like regular messages from your friends do. So this means practically everyone whose message is in your 'other folder' is probably a huge-ass creep with a stalking tendency.

I have never responded to a single other message in my life, and I never plan to. That stuff definitely defines the term 'the scum of Facebook' pretty well. But regardless of the trauma it brings, it also gives you a truckload of entertainment. After the initial shock wore off, I was in tears of laughter!

So guys and girls, if you haven't already, please do check your other messages folder and see the kind of (unwanted) attention being bestowed on you! Make sure you let me know about whatever dirt you have in there. I've heard plenty stories that are way more creepier (and hilarious) than mine, so I'm looking forward to hearing about whatever you've been receiving.

Before I say farewell, here's my personal favorite:

Everything about this perfectly sums up the entire essence of the 'other messages' folder. Also, this particular gem was sent to four people I know... Including my own mother.

TaK3 cArE gUyzz... :o)

only bloggers will understand

On Twitter...

On Facebook... 

On Blogger... 

?????????

The Truth About FWD Mails

How many times have we been explicitly annoyed with the constant flow of the much dreaded 'forward mail' in our email inbox? These forward (or more commonly known by their 'FWD' abbreviation) mails have made emailing a pain in the butt with their often uselessness. According to me, the evil FWD mail can be broken down into four main forms:

That's right, kids. there's the Quiz mail, with a link to a website that often requires you to answer useless questions and find out even more useless (and often untrue) things about yourself.

There's the ever popular 'Chain' mail, which threatens you with impossible things like death by an exploding purple cellphone charger or a fatal wound inflicted by the mythical Chupacabra if you do not pass it on. These often require you to count backwards from 100 and then make a wish while spitting in your hand.

Then there's the 'funny pictures' mail, which isn't so bad. It mostly contains pictures of women drivers getting into accidents or someone's baby being cute by peeing in a soup bowl. The novelty wears off when the same pictures are sent to you over and over again by fifty-million different people. That's when you feel happy about all those accidents and you hope that the baby actually drank the soup.

Finally, there's the 'emotional, tear-jerking true story' email containing a totally fake and made-up account of people doing stupid things in the name of love/loyalty/cows.

BUT (yes, there's a but), there is a fifth form of the FWD mail, and that's the one containing valuable information. These forward mails have been a great help to me from time to time, and I shall give you the most recent examples as to why.

- The Day My iPod Stopped Working

It was like the end of the world for me. My iPod had been one of my most prized possessions ever since my parents had gifted it to me on my fifteenth birthday. I had spilled water all over it, and it wasn't switching on or charging. In the midst of my panic, I miraculously remembered an email I had received a couple of months prior to the incident about fixing iPods at home at zero cost. In a hurry, I opened my email, and after a couple of minutes I found what I was looking for. Someone had forwarded me an email about covering the wet iPod in dry rice and leaving it that way for 24 hours. The rice would absorb the water and the iPod would work again. I tried it, and it worked.

i hope the fact that i have a purple ipod nano is understandable through this picture.

- The Day My Grandfather Had A Stroke

We were all eating dinner when he collapsed in his chair. In twenty seconds he regained consciousness but his speech was slurred. Everyone was in a frenzy. A week and a half before it happened, I had read something in my email about certain things a person must do to figure out if another person has had a stroke or not. They were to. a. Ask the person to repeat any sentence after you. b. Ask the person to smile. c. Ask the person to raise their hands. If they are unable to do one or more of these things, they have most probably had a stroke and should be taken to a hospital within an hour. My grandfather was able to raise his hands, but his smile was lopsided and he couldn't coherently repeat what we were asking him to say. Identifying what had happened to him cleared our minds off of the confusion, and we were able to act and react fast to whatever was happening. My grandfather was taken to the hospital super quick, and in a few days he made a full recovery.

- The Day I Burnt My Hand

I blame my own stupidity for getting into that mess in the first place. The kettle was boiling, and like an idiot I put my hand over the steam emitting from the spout to see how hot it was. 

Let me tell you folks, it was SO BLOODY HOT. My hand got burnt. Luckily I had a small packet of flour inside the fridge. I had read in a FWD email that cold flour heals burns instantly and does not leave a single mark or a trace of pain. I applied the cold flour on the place where I had scalded myself, and when I washed it off (I had kept it on for ten minutes) there was absolutely no sign of any burning except a slight pinkish tinge to my skin (which faded within an hour). No blisters or puckering or peeling or any sort of pain at all. It was miraculous. One of my cousins had burnt her finger a bit while handling a hot pan, and her dad had forced her to apply ice to it. I was there at that time, and I told her to put flour on it instead. She settled for applying flour on one half of her finger and ice on the other. The place where the flour was applied had absolutely no marks and it had stopped hurting. The place where she applied ice however, turned into a blister.

x

So you see, after these incidents, whenever I receive a FWD email with a promising title (e.g. 'this is good for your health' or 'how to do so-and-so' etc), I never fail to go through it. Such information is great to be read and passed around. It could really help someone in their time of need.

But if someone ever forwards me a picture of a happy pooping cow and expects me to find it funny, I will find them. And then cut them up into a million pieces and then find that happy pooping cow and STUFF THE PIECES IN ITS MOUTH!!!!!!!!

Goodnight.

some people are just a FAIL at life

let me tell you something.

i have a hope. a gleaming, shining, sparkling hope that one day, everyone whom i know will have gained some intelligence and therefore be a pleasure for me to associate with.

one day, everybody will be able to hold a smart conversation and be fun to talk to.

one day, everyone will be able to spell correctly and make no major grammatical errors in their general life.

one day...

... f0Rg3t !t.

x

so yeah, i was greeted by ^THAT on my facebook homepage yesterday. it really sucks because i barely use facebook and when i do, i have the utmost displeasure of witnessing a few of my acquaintances showing off their tYpInG SkIlLzx to the world. *shudders*

for me, slang is something i usually do not pay much attention to. a lot of people i know and love use slang. they like to shorten words and use popular abbreviations instead of typing out the correct spelling.
now, i don't really have a major problem with people who use slang like this:

because you know, a person who writes like this most probably doesn't want to waste any time in expressing how cute they think a random orange-haired girl is. they shorten their words to save time. at least their short forms are understandable.

but when it comes to stuff like this, i DO pay attention:

yeah. IF YOU TYPE LIKE THIS, I WILL FIND YOU AND KILL YOU. i do not see any point in elongating a word and adding extra letters to it, especially when the word in question is something that looks completely fine on its own and is relatively easier to type.

another thing that extremely annoys me is when people use alternative (and nonexistent) spellings as different versions of words, which are essentially useless because they have the same amount of alphabets as the original word.

unfortunate and totally real examples:
you = yew
cool = kewl
loser = luxer
know = knoe
time = tyme

DUDE WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM. or should i say 'prawblm'? yeah, WOT IX UR PR0BLM HUH?! this kind of stuff looks gruesome. towtaly grewsumm.

there is only one suitable picture to express the way i feel whenever i come across all the above stuff, and that is this:

true story.