What makes something popular, revisited

This is a continuation of the post originally made on July 23rd.

It seemed appropriate to revisit this post since this is a goal that is paramount in this kind of business- blogging, that is.  After all, if nobody visits your blog, what's the point?

I've been doing this on a full time basis for over a year now, and I still don't know what brings people here. Or how to get more people.  I have a faint idea of how to get more pageviews, but that's about it.  But, I don't know the real reason why those people find my stuff interesting to read.  In fact, outside of a few comments, I don't know how many people are actually reading my stuff at all.

Popularity is not a simple subject.  I found that out when I went to the Wikipedia, which is one of my habits. Yeah, it may not be the best source of information in the world, but it is handy.  The entry on the subject of popularity was quite short, amazingly enough.  Now, unpopularity is a very long post.  Perhaps popularity needs no explanation, but unpopularity does.

But you have to click on their links provided in the body of the entry to get the full flavor of it.  It mentions value systems.  Funny, I never thought that popularity and value systems went together.  Yet, here is Wikipedia saying that it does.  There is a claim of cult of personality that gets mentioned in the entry as well. But Wikipedia has a warning at the top of that linked page about too many weasel words.

A little digging and we find political religion.  That's an offshoot of the cult of personality entry.  I think Obama was headed down the cult of personality path.  Evidently, he couldn't pull it off.  Now, he is just another politician, not the "Messiah".

I just read Parapundit's post, in which he claims that Democracy has failed.   I recall that he favored Obama in 2008.  Now, he doesn't seem to be happy.  Has Democracy failed, or has he failed?  He compares California with the rest of the country.  Yet the rest of the country isn't as financially irresponsible as California.  Obama and the Democrats want to keep bailing out states like California.  That's why they, in California, or in Washington, won't ever do anything about their failed government.  If you stop bailing them out, they will have to fix their broken state.  This is true in all cases.  If you don't fix it, it will break down.  There's no reason to fix it if there are those who won't allow it to be fixed.

Popularity may mean telling people what they want to hear.  But what if they need to hear what they don't want to hear?  Should you sacrifice the truth in order to remain in their good graces?  If they are in bad enough shape, they will be forced to listen to what they don't want to listen to.  No need to cater to their whims.  Just stop doing that, and they will clean up.  In the late seventies, New York went bankrupt, or nearly bankrupt.  They weren't bailed out.  The newspapers said:  New York, drop dead.  They didn't drop dead. They fixed up the mess and went on about their business.

But values should have some objective meaning aside from the cult of personality.  Popularity is like the shifting sands of the desert.  You can't count on it to last for the long term.  You need some permanence, so as not to get lost in the maze of shifting circumstances.  A cult of personality is no way to run your life, nor a railroad, nor a country for that matter.

Maybe my blog doesn't ever catch on.  But I won't surrender my own values in order to succeed at this business.  I write whatever is consistent with that.  If nobody likes it, well, I'm sorry.  Like Flip Wilson used to say.  What you see is what you get!