Late November Musings

I've been taking a few days off of work - I find that taking time off at this time of year makes that final run-in to Christmas slightly easier to take - repairing the plaster on the front wall of my spare room and unsuccessfully trying to replace the kitchen taps (again). Despite having more time on my hands, I find myself with less to post about here. Part of the problem is that writing here is something of a safety valve for me with regard to work. However, with no work for a few days, I find myself mellowed out and apparently incapable of ranting. Not even Crapchester's lousy Christmas lights display in the town centre, (for the second year running), haven't outraged me sufficiently. Moreover, I'm saving my anger at the stream of shit issuing from the government with regard to the forthcoming public sector strikes until next week, when the stoppages actually occur.

The only thing which has been bothering me of late is the ongoing destruction of the non-commercial web by Google. Now, I'm not going to launch into another despairing rant, but the fact is that if you aren't a big brand site selling something and carrying lots of Google ads, then the traffic situation is just getting worse and worse. One thing that has become crystal clear is that Google's current algorithms simply don't 'get' or rate humour and satire, (unless linked to a big name celebrity's site), seeing it as 'not useful' to users and therefore 'poor quality' content. Consequently, humour and satire sites are being starved of traffic and seem to be dropping like flies: the revived Satire Wire, for instance, seems to have died again, whilst Glossynews (which has been around almost as long as The Sleaze) hasn't updated for over a month. This is also reflected in the decreasing number of headlines being carried by Humorfeed on a daily basis, (the traffic driven by this site is also a shadow of former glories). Some humour and satire sites continue, though. In the main, they are either labours of love like The Sleaze, or run by people with media contacts they can exploit to drive traffic from non-web sources. Nonetheless, whatever way you look at it, the future seems pretty bloody bleak.