A month ago I wrote a post about old posts that we have probably forgotten about and how they don’t disappear but hang around in cyberspace until cyberspace collapses on itself. The post about “old posts” was inspired by the second ever post I published on this site – an ode to the peculiarities of gas pumps. It had never gotten any hits, then, all of a sudden, a person took a look at it. Needless to say, I was thrilled that some of the things I had written while wandering in this newfound wilderness of blogging had been read. I went back to look at it again. I wrote a new post about the experience. Then, I went on my merry blogging way.
Then, something strange happened. It got another hit. And another one. And another one. On and on it went for days. Each time I looked at the “Site Stats” another search engine term was popping up.
gas pumps
gasoline pump
pushing credit or debit at a gasoline pump
gasoline pump pictures
pictures of gasoline pumps
In a matter of weeks, a post that laid dormant forever and had been given up as unreadable and forgotten had just gone to the top of the Hit Parade. Once lagging behind at a total of ZERO hits, the sarcastic look at pumping gas reached the top of the charts and passed such favorites as:
John Wayne and Edgar Allan Poe
It seemed that I had a mystery on my hands and needed the help of those meddling kids in the Mystery Machine. Have gas pumps suddenly gained a new popularity? Are people becoming interested in the intricacies of debit and credit card use? Has this become the hip thing to look up among hipsters?
To solve the mystery, I started up the search engine and began looking myself. Starting with the simplest search term, I typed in “gas pumps” and looked around. Page after page, I could not find a reference to the “Surrounded by Imbeciles” world. Then, I shifted to images, and, behold, “Surrounded by Imbeciles” appeared as the first entry on the first line.
Part of the mystery was solved, searchers had come to me through the photo I uploaded to the post. When they hit images, there it appeared. However, a second mystery remains. Why, in the middle of January, did gas pumps become so popular? Even after being forced to watch Murder, She Wrote as a kid, I don’t believe I have the sleuthing talents to figure it out. Perhaps, you readers can help. Or, maybe I should call the In Search Of version of Leonard Nimoy.
SBI: A Thinning Crowd 
I was super shocked that Meg’s drawing of Santa Hitler is/was the first on the image search for Hitler North Pole.
Some, I still don’t know how they find me because I’ll go back 10+ pages on search and images and not find myself. I do feel bad for the people searching google.tr though, since my blog isn’t in Turkish.
Ha. I had a Swedish search once. It was weird to click and find my blog in another language. How can you go wrong with a Santa/Hitler drawing?