I once mused "It seems every article I post on this site gets 5 or 5 million views with absolutely nothing in-between." That article itself barely reached the 5 mark and possibly still hasn't.
Recently, something I posted a long time ago made the jump from 5 to 5 million views. Unlike previous times, I didn't even notice until after the fact.
I don't do anything to promote this site. I don't even tell people I know in real life about it. When something takes off it is always a surprise to me. Unfortunately it's often been a negative experience.
My first encounter with virality was when an early version of Digg posted a link to my Sears Catalog scans. I didn't learn of this from dozens of messages saying "thanks for the totally free scans". Instead, I learned of this from dozens of messages suggesting awful things I should do to myself for saying something upsetting about a video game. Do other hobbies work like this? If I was into knitting and commented that a color of yarn looked dorky would I receive similar feedback? I remember when the gaming community was a few kids crowded around a cabinet at the roller rink. How did we let it devolve so badly?
One holiday season, and several thereafter, My Loser Phase: Reflections on Video Game Retail from 1992-1997 blew up. However this usually results in positive feedback, often from others who worked a similar job. There's no real pattern to which years this happens in.
Likewise, any time Phantasy Star III is re-released my page of maps is sort of popular for a week or two. Feedback from these events is why I eventually added overworld maps and versions with/without labels.
Of all the catalogs I've scanned, the Electronics Boutique Spring 1993 one has gone the closest to viral. It was shared by a much larger site making a point about video game prices. That incident made my (long former) web host cranky with me, which is how I learned it happened. They threatened to cut me off but didn't follow through (that time). Other catalogs have also made the rounds to a smaller degree.
Years later I learned that a small gallery I posted titled "If NES games were made today" went viral when the same web host took my site offline. Their "unlimited bandwidth" promise rang hollow. I almost gave up on this whole running a personal site idea.
Instead I migrated this site to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and started using a content delivery network (CDN). I should have done this sooner. It was cheaper than using a web hosting company and the occasionally viral piece barely increases my monthly bill by $2. It also reinvigorated me to post more often and to post even larger resolution catalog scans.
Since then, viral articles have been more of a blip. I cranked out something called Saving GameStop in an hour. In 2021 it became briefly popular for a couple days. I found out from some emails that were confused about why this article was (briefly) the top Google result for something involving the GameStop meme stock incident. I don't know why. I don't recall what the exact search terms were either.
One image from the Burger King Nintendo Superstars scan has been shared a ludicrous number of times. It's the one explaining that Donkey Kong was born in the United Kingdom. OK.
I don't check statistics or traffic all that often. Nowadays it's mostly to look for AI scraping bots doing something so incredibly stupid it impacts my hosting costs. A couple million views over a day doesn't move the needle much. A bot rescanning the same few images thousands of times a minute over the course of a month will. One bot that is possibly named after the GTA III protagonist is usually the worst. There is another that decided my fonts.css was so interesting it needed to scan it continuously. Since everything here is free, and I don't run ads or do anything to monetize this site, I have no problem with AI bots scraping content. That is up until it actually costs money. This is a recent problem that I have to watch out for.
One thing I've learned from this - my console timeline article is not that interesting to AI bots, but the table of dates used to build it is extremely interesting to them. It's checked a few hundred times a day for updates, hundreds a day is fine from a cost standpoint. I only update that page about once a year so they are burning a lot of their CPU time rescanning it.
That brings us to now. Via a visitor email I learned that my Sony Data Discman article was shared on ycombinator. It was a very nice email thankfully. I peeked at my logs and saw it was much more than that one site. Perhaps it started on ycombinator and was reposted or maybe the other way around. I did not look at any of the posts because I'd rather jump on a live grenade than accidentally read the comments.
It's odd. That article is sort of very old. I posted a version of it almost 20 years prior. One very boring day in March of 2020 I remixed it by adding screenshots of the emulator included on the discs. Nearly 6 years after that, someone found it interesting enough to share on a popular site. It was news to them I guess.
This time though nothing broke. If someone was offended by something I said they didn't tell me.
Beside a visitor email, there's another way I learn that a page has briefly gone viral. It's when spammers ignore the notes on my contact page and ask about writing sponsored posts. I have quietly unfollowed many sites who gave into this. Imagine a site that posts content about a specific topic a few times a week that suddenly is interested in reviewing an online casino or some other trash. I get that people need to make money, but it's still disappointing. If a site reviewed RPGs and had a sponsored post that was really a stealth ad for an RPG that's a little different. I suspect that happens more than I even notice. It's not that different from reviewing a free copy of a game and inflating the score in hopes of earning future free games. Still, that's not for me.
With such an old article going viral I can't help but wonder what will be next. Could it be something I forgot I wrote in the first place? Are there old views or comments I'd regret now? It's a good thing I updated that page 6 years ago, 14 years prior to that I was prone to sneaking "edgy" comments into articles. I left some "edgy" screenshots in it though. I would choose different ones today. We all grow over time. The me of 20 years ago had worse impulse control and even worse hot takes than I do now. There are things on this site I wrote 25 years ago that certainly don't reflect my viewpoint today. Should I preemptively seek those out in case they go viral? Unlikely as that scenario is of course.
No, I don't think I will. If someone wants to judge me based on something I said 25 years ago I can take it. I won't lose sleep over some sarcastic comment that's possibly older than the reader. I'm not going to try to predict what will go viral next, maybe nothing else will. I'll just keep on posting things that interest me and 5, or sometimes 5 million, visitors.
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