I tried. So help me, I tried. I honestly thought I had pulled it off, but the verdict is in and I simply didn’t manage to do it. McRapey writes:
From January 1 through today, Mr. Beale has mentioned me by name (or by nickname) on those two sites 145 times. This is defined as references in blog posts; other references — references in comments, persistent sidebar links, or comments by others weren’t counted, nor were Twitter or other social media posts. If you want to do the math, that means Mr. Beale invoked me on his blogs on average once every 2.366 days. Which is rather a lot! There are 22 days left in the year, which means if Mr. Beale follows his average, he’ll mention me nine more times before the ball drops in Times Square. So, for my purposes, I am using 154 times as the official tally number.
I had pledged $5 per reference up to $1,000, which (again with the math) means that Mr. Beale would have had to reference me 200 times over the year for the full payout. 154 times turns out to be 77% of that.
So: If you made a pledge to support the Counteract a Bigot fund drive earlier this year, please donate at least 77% of your pledge amount to the organizations you pledged to fund.
I say at least because, of course, I encourage you to donate the full amount of your pledge if you can. I will be doing so, I have just done so, as well as adding in another $250 to my pledge as thanks to the friend who kept track of Mr. Beale’s sites so I didn’t have to. But even if everyone sticks to just 77% of their full pledge amount, we’ll still have donated at least $46,000 dollars to charities and organizations dedicated to fighting bigotry and/or sexual assault in its various forms. And that ain’t bad.
As for Mr. Beale, well. He’s Dunning-Kruger’s favorite son. As such he’s incapable of imagining himself in anything other than a victory condition, so I’m sure he’ll imagine one here, too. Let him. The rest of us know better.
The idea that I am incapable of imagining myself in anything other than a victory condition is an interesting one; I am admittedly good at many things, but I’m not THAT good. Indeed, one need merely look at my failure to mention McRapey the requisite 200 times to see that I am not always triumphant. I am embarrassed. I am chagrined. And I would also be remiss if I did not bring the following facts to the reader’s attention. (The numbers in parentheses are global Alexa rankings.)
Alexa USA rankings 12/12/12
12,996 Whatever
29,426 Vox Popoli
73,183 Alpha Game
Alexa USA rankings 12/12/13
6,690 Vox Popoli (55,972)
14,181 Alpha Game (101,337)
50,207 Whatever (143,885)
Google Pageviews November 2012
745,857 “those two sites”
726,445 Whatever
Google Pageviews November 2013
1,058,663 “those two sites”
384,958 Whatever
Considering that the victory conditions last year were established as blog traffic, with members of the Whatever warren taunting me about Whatever’s supposedly gargantuan blog readership and McRapey himself pounding his chest about his 8 million pageviews in 2012 when he wasn’t advertising his “50,000 DAILY READERS”, in this case, the facts speak rather clearly for themselves. McRapey is unlikely to even hit 7.5 million Google pageviews this year; imagine how much more his readership would have declined if “those two sites” hadn’t mentioned him 145 times, to say nothing of the copious references on Heartiste and other sites.
I note that the Dunning-Kruger effect is “a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority.” I leave it to the reader to determine who the description fits more closely.
But at least he’ll always have his Participation Hugo.