Here’s something odd. Back in November I posted a link to Pete Townsend’s review of Kurt Cobain’s diaries. Now that the pedophile (or paedophile, for British readers) arrest story has broken, it seems that people must be Googling his name and somehow finding their way to my old post.
Even though it was written about an entirely different topic, because it mentions Townsend, it has now spawned a growing discussion area. Weird.
Obviously people need to express themselves and stories like these stir up strong feelings (although if you want to see a livelier debate with strong feelings expressed on both sides, check out this Kuro5hin thread, where I’m surprised to see so many defending borderline practices), so I don’t really mind that this is going on, but I do wonder about the thought process (and the literal clickthrough process) that has led some of my commenters to my site.
Comments
3 responses to “Outrage over Pete Townsend”
I’ve been watching the same effect hit my site for the past couple months now, although with a far sillier subject.
Back in October, I linked to a site I found that amused me — a “protest” against the title of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Then starting in early December, as the release date for the film grew closer, the power of Google kicked in and I started getting comments on that post. Like the ones you’ve been getting regarding Townsend, they range from worthwhile to utterly worthless. It’s been quite interesting to watch, though.
Our own little mini-zeitgeist meters! ;)
For what it’s worth
To the people I referrred to in Outrage over Pete Townsend, who are busily debating the story over in the discussion area of my Pete Townsend reviews Kurt Cobain’s diaries entry, I feel that I should pass along this report from the Smoking Gun, which l…
I was “googling” Kurt Cobain’s name and read PT’s response with interest. I thought the same thing when reading down the list of responses, that they weren’t talking about the main debate anymore or even responding to what what at the top of the page. I myself posted some responses recently, and I see the way one person says something (and you usually do read down the page to see what other people think before you even see where it is that you can respond