An Urgent Message for Christians
Heh heh. Am I a whore for hits, or what?
Actually, I’m running a little experiment. Notice the BlogRush widget prominently sitting over there at the top left. If you want to know more about BlogRush's e-pyramid scheme, click on the bottom of the widget.
On Friday, my friend vjack at Atheist Revolution placed that billboard on his blog, with the expectation of making his traffic go through the roof. He posted about it, which is what made me notice the thing. Well, I don’t know whether his hit count went up significantly, although I expect not.
But there's a bigger problem: BlogRush offers no Atheist/Freethought category, so poor vjack, along with all other atheists who have chosen to display the widget, have been forced to classify themselves in the Religion & Spirituality group. I checked vjack’s widget three or four times, and found that he was shilling almost totally for Christian blogs. The sole exception was a superstitious New Age-y yoga site that seemed to be promoting kindergarten Hinduism. V is now advertising for every pious nutball web site in the BlogRush stable.
As am I. Because I'm running a test to see if BlogRush's claims are legit. If they are, I'll urge all atheist/freethinker blogs to join up right away. But I'm skeptical, as I am about all things that offer pie-in-the-sky.
I think vjack may have a problem attracting the mass of Religion & Spirituality clickers, who overwhelmingly appear to be Jesus-jumpers. His blog's name, remember, is Atheist Revolution. But the title No More Hornets reveals nothing about the godlessness you can revel in here. To see if there's any truth to BlogRush's net-rich-quick scheme, I picked a headline for this post that no theocrat could resist.
So: Welcome, Christians. You’ve been duped into temporarily associating with an atheist. The Lord is gonna be mighty pissed that you let your guard down.
I'm not a scientist, but I'm theorizing that the widget will not remain here long. I'll be testing my hypothesis starting ... now.
Update: It's just about five minutes since I launched this little essay, and among the five blogs listed on my widget, surprisingly, are both Atheist Revolution and The Atheist Jew. Hmmm.
Hey, Exterminator, I enjoyed reading this.
14 comments:
I installed BlogRush about a week and a half ago. I too noticed that almost all of the "Religion" category blogs were pro-religion to say the least. I have changed the category to Philosophy for now. I have sent an email to their customer service department and have requested a new category covering Atheism. We'll see. As far as traffic goes I only see a few hits/day from the widget, but they have had technical difficulties since their roll-out and promise to be fully functional within days.
You are hilarious, exterminator.
Yep. I'll be interested to see how your little experiment works.
When vjack posted about that, I went to the site and filled in all the info to sign up. I was one click from ""submit", then looked at the ad on his page, and noticed that it was filled with references to religious sites. I figured I'd give it a little time, see if it changed.
Good to have a guinea pig as a friend.
I can't help it, I HAVE to do it...I dindn't expect to see you here, Spanish Imquisitor!
No one ever does.
You godless whore. As if the Paris Hilton stunt wasn't enough. How low will you go? Where's your integrity, man?!
so, um, how's it working out for you?
Report to the faithless:
It's now about 2:00 a.m. on Tuesday, September 2. So far, I haven't seen any spike in my traffic whatsoever, and, in fact, I don't seem to have any sizable number of hits that come from anyone beyond the usual suspects: my regular readers, first-time visitors who come to my blog from other atheist sites, and people googling the weirdest phrases that just happen to correspond with some of mine.
But Blogrush has been only semi-functional for the last few days, so perhaps that's why I'm not deriving any benefit. Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that a blog doesn't get listed until it publishes a second post after installing the widget. I will probably publish something late Tuesday/early Wednesday, so that hypothesis will be tested soon.
In the meantime, I continue to see the words Christ, Jesus, Salvation, Ministry, and Light (that's really popular with the religious dimwits) a lot. Oh, and the Atheist Jew pops up fairly frequently, too. But then his last post was titled -- no kidding -- "The Atheist Jew Goes to Church."
If you are such a whore for hits why haven't you joined Deep Thoughts (Mojoey's) Atheist blogroll yet?
... or if it doesn't work out you could stage an atheist invasion.
Hey! I was lured here by your title and cracked up when I saw your whore for hits comments.
Interestingly enough, I am a Christian (whehter I am a nutbag or not is for you to decide), and I would gladly associate with you..Jesus hung around with all kinds of people and the only ones that annoyed him were the overly religious that judged everyone else.
Peace! <><
Tia, you're welcome here any time. I'll visit your blog to determine whether I think you're a nutbag or not. I suspect from your comment that you're not.
I will say, though, that a lot of overly religious, judgmental people go out of their way to use Jesus's name. If that's not his thing, as you contend, who shall we hold responsible for the misuses of his name? The history of Christianity, from its earliest times, has been a long string of rabble-rousing diatribes and physical violence against non-Christians and Christians who weren't the "right" kind.
I suppose if you toss out all the epistles and Revelation and the entire Old Testament and the incident with the fig tree and all the nonsense Jesus allegedly spouted about how doomed everybody is who doesn't follow him, you might be able to justify your claim.
Don't get me wrong. I know some Christians who are decent, tolerant people. But I don't think their decency and tolerance stems from their religion. I think the people I'm referring to are the way they are in spite of their religion, not because of it.
I had to laugh at some of your remarks- especially the one about Jesus being "pissed off" about those Christians who visit your site. You've got it wrong though- perhaps He would be more "pissed off" if we didn't visit you, because after all, we Christians are supposed to help persuade the "lost" that there is indeed a God. Call me a nutbag if you will.
About BlogRush- I installed it when it must have been only two-three days old, seen very few stats so far due to the technicalities, but I'll leave it up for a while and see what happens. Meanwhile, I hope you do post your findings about it- a lot of people are curious as to whether it's going to be all that it's cracked up to be.
I hear what you are saying. Church history is not squeaky clean in the least...it seems like a long list of bumbling, hypocritical, fearful and foolish blunders...and in many instances, it was just that...but ah..that's why we need grace in the first place. The one thing I have learned is that Christianity is not for the perfect, the sure, or the holy, but for the sick, the lost, the complicated, the hypocrites...we all need some grace, and that really is the core of Jesus' message, GRACE.
Whatever you are searching for, I hope you find it and this Christian will respect you and fight for your right to believe in the way you wish. :)
As far as being a nutbag, I get a lot of them on my blog...some very fundemental nutbags and I do try to reach them by using their own logic against them...but I tend to be more moderate and believe that God and His grace are bigger than any of us realize. That is why I put down the gaval and don't judge those outside my faith. Peace.
I'm continuing to use BlogRush and continuing to experience disappointment. I have received a tiny increase in traffic, and yes, I have been advertising Christian mind rot on my atheist blog in exchange for these hits. I know some atheist bloggers are e-mailing BlogRush requesting an atheism category. Maybe if they hear from enough of us, they;ll consider it.
If not, don't be surprised if I end my association with BlogRush soon. I'm determined to give them a chance to get their act together, get out of beta, etc., but my patience has limits.
What I will say is that I've noticed several more atheist blogs appearing on my BlogRush widget. So who knows?
Post a Comment