The Best Form of Flattery

When I set out blogging, I had no idea about keywords and SEO, and after these many years, I still don't. As I study my traffic stats, I learn a little about what makes web traffic move or stall as the case may be. I found that many people look for things like recipes of low calorie cheesecake, which in my opinion is like searching for a petunia with no secrets or the ethics of Indian politics. So I wrote a post built around that search keyword, and it worked. I think I have caused many a weight loss program to crash as they gave in to my temptation. That, however, is not why the URL for this post is about Imitation Crab. May I bake cheesecakes in hell.

I have been brooding over the fact that a lot of traffic to this blog was coming from searches about Sunny Leone, whom I had mentioned in a post, and whose name was also in the post title. I do not know a lot about her, and if I were made to listen to audio clips, I probably wouldn't be able to tell if it were Sunny or Jazmin, but I am thankful to her, and her work and her life. On any given day, she sends me between 7-10% of page views. Unfortunately, none of them stay to read the post, since that was not what they came looking for.

Imagine my pleasure and surprise when I find that that post is now being used as reference material for a content mill. Now that is called doing something right. I do not know if I should be flattered or amused, since the post is quite a rant against the public hypocrisy on matters pertaining to sex, gender and sexuality in India. I just hope that all those rewrites manage to capture the essence of the message and broadcast it louder and clearer than I have been able to. And I hope they all make some money out of it.

I especially liked the instructions that came with the assignment.

Use the link provided to write a 300 word article over (sic) the same subject/ topic. Make sure you dont (sic) have the same content as of the link.

Summarize the whole article with the ending point. Try to end with humor or concise summary making the experience of reading the article complete (sic)
Make sure the link to original article is not refered (sic).

This is not a post against plagiarism, since anyone is free to use facts and ideas, and in the case of my writing, free to reproduce it as is, but a post sharing what I consider is the best form of flattery.