Traffic. Some unthinking bloggers think of traffic as an essentially valuable commodity whose value is measured quantitatively, just like the value of gold or other pure substances. But verbal traffic, the traffic of words and ideas, is never any more or less valuable than the contents of the characters, and the minds, of the Internet traffickers.
Hack journalists such as many of those who work for Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, get a lot of traffic. Loathsome hack bloggers such as Michelle Malkin get the most traffic of all. The cult of publicity and popularity is a poisonous one, polluting the mental environment as much as fossil fuels and China’s unsustainable industrialization pollute the physical environment.
Our blog is not concerned with quantities of traffic, or publicity or popularity. We have made this clear from the beginning. We do not, and never will, accept advertising or sponsorship. Nor is our blog a means of networking for opportunistic professional purposes; if anything, our trenchant, unreserved denunciations of the myth of China’s “economic miracle” will continue to make us pariahs among any “China Hands” who have access to business opportunities in any country, as well as among all Western mainstream media.
And yet, here comes Richard of Peking Duck, throwing a puerile hissy-fit in response (several responses, actually) to another China-blogger’s post regarding how and why Richard has banned us from his site. He imagines that our differences with and criticisms of him all come down to a craving for traffic, as he comments:
I expect that to generate yet another post on said blog, where site traffic is far higher than my own and the comments more voluminous, but I can deal with that.
