It’s slow times over here in singleland. No new dates, no good prospects. Picture an actual tumbleweed rolling across my okc profile and that’s pretttttyyy much the current state of affairs. So what’s a dating blogger to do when she has no dates? Stalk her blog’s stats page, of course.
Confession: we enjoy looking at our stats the way some people enjoy watching porn. True, you can’t get much more narcissistic than obsessing over how many people are reading a blog that you write about yourself, but it’s just so fun! We can see who is reading in foreign countries. We can see the google search terms people use before they click to our site (these are so completely amazing that they deserve their own post. Stay tuned.) And while this all makes us feel very cool, the actual number of hits we get on a daily basis is, well, let’s call it humble.
Anyway, last week I signed onto the stats page and saw this:
Those are our views per day. Wow, I thought, I know my K posts were riveting, but literally three times the typical number of people visited on those two days. I’m not going to lie, my heart started racing a bit. Did Mindy Kaling tweet about us? Did Tina Fey stumble upon the blog while doing research for a movie about online dating and email a link to all her contacts in Hollywood? Is she about to hire us as screenwriters!?! SHOULD I QUIT MY JOB???
Then I noticed something else:
Stucu was on Reddit. Here’s what I knew about Reddit up until this point:
- It’s a sausage fest. Roughly 50% of okc profiles I read mention reddit somewhere in their profile, but I’ve never once heard any girl I know mention it. The only time I’d actually been on the site was when my friend’s husband (Hi Mr. R!) emailed me links to stories. Here is an actual stat that I looked up, because I felt like doing that instead of finishing my work today:
![reddit stat]()
That’s from a PBS video that you can check out here if you’re stuck in an airport or a prison cell and you have 8 minutes to kill. Anyway, back to what I knew about Reddit when I made my discovery:
- The site design/interface is overwhelming. And quite frankly, ugly. Would it kill the good people of Reddit to add a little production value? Maybe a new font or color scheme? A format that doesn’t make me want to blow my brains out?
- There are approximately 5 fafillion “sub-categories” including, as it turns out, one about OKcupid.
- The concept is to vote posts up and down, so the more popular posts are at the top of each page. The comments are also notoriously…spirited (translation: nasty).
But the question still remained: how did we end up on Reddit in the first place? I clicked the first link and saw this:
I recognized our promoter as W, a friend of a friend of L’s who has become a loyal reader, even though he’s never actually met any of us. What a great shout out! This was exciting. Stucu was getting a ton of a lot more traffic. Tina Fey would be calling any day now.
Thennnnn I noticed the comments. And while I’m still holding out hope that Tina, her husband Jeff Richmond, and their daughters Alice Zenobia and Penelope Richmond will all love and adore our blog, I’d say the men of Reddit have pretty much made up their minds about us. Please enjoy our favorite comments:
Rick Perry, is that you?
Ouch, 26 year old from CT who is “actually a llama”. Also, do you mean my response where I called K a really sweet, thoughtful guy and said I felt bad I wasn’t into him because he was so great? If that’s why I’m single, I might as well slap on a mumu and start adopting cats now, because I’m f-cked.
Guess I’m doing my part to keep Reddit popular among the embittered male demographic. You’re welcome!
Hitler, is that you?
Oh okay, solitary girl on Reddit. Yes, it’s true we say ‘like’ a lot. D and I were actually cringing over the gchat convos I posted and the number of ‘likes’ that three well educated, grown ass women managed to drop. But honestly, you’re a 28 year old woman mocking strangers on an okcupid subreddit, so… people in glass houses. Also, it’s hardly surprising to be dissed by a bunch of hostile dudes behind their computer screens for deigning to (very nicely) reject a guy, but I guess gender solidarity means nothing to you. What’s that, Leslie Knope?
Preach.
Last but not least, my favorite comment:
K, is that you?
PS– Special thank you to W for pimping us out on Reddit and also for defending us against the haters! (I didn’t share that part, but he did. So nice). Even if we enraged a few mouth breathers, as Amanda Bynes would probably say, there’s no such thing as bad press.
