Statistics
High site traffic is a mixed blessing sometimes. Since last Friday, I've had almost 2000 visitors from this Swedish site who decided to have a look at those wrong-in-so-many-ways Zulu-Lulu cocktail swizzle sticks I scanned a couple of weeks ago. I'd welcome them as new readers, but only about 80 actually bothered to click up through to the Ephemeraholic main page, and apparently no one made it to the Goof proper!
Not a very adventurous bunch, and since none of these people know anything about me other than the fact that I own at least one item of racist, sexist, and ageist cocktail gear, I have to wonder if I'm viewed in Sweden as some sort of retro-lounge skinhead? I'm tempted to take it down off my site.
Comments
Nah. Leave it up. It's not like you created them. You're just saying, "Hey! Look what I found! Can you believe this?" It's better to show off the things of the past than to hide them.
Posted by: Collin | September 11, 2005 2:35 PM
You are looking at a gift horse in the mouth, sir.
Posted by: rone | September 11, 2005 5:21 PM
Collin: yeah, that's the way I look at it too, but unfortunately, some people have a way of assigning evil motives in spite of whatever your original intentions might have been.
rone: I'm not sure in what sense this constitutes a gift horse if none of these visitors are becoming regular readers, and I'm not getting paid for click-throughs from the referring site either.
Posted by: MrBaliHai | September 11, 2005 7:07 PM
I always had you pegged as an EvilDoer
Posted by: Fritz | September 12, 2005 10:45 PM
Dear Mr BaliHai,
You are doing a great job and Zulu-Lulu is an object that is fantastic in many ways. Sure, a swedish neo-nazi might think it's funny. So do I. However the fun, for me, lies in seeing how what's acceptable changes. (the racist-sexist combo is rare) Also the design is great in it self. Please keep looking for and posting interesting things. Everything we do can be misunderstood.
Posted by: P-E Fronning | September 13, 2005 12:13 PM
Fritz: of course, but I do my evil in a nice way.
P-E: I think Europeans have fewer problems with these sorts of images than Americans do, but you don't have millions of former slaves living in your countries who are going to be offended by them.
Posted by: MrBaliHai | September 13, 2005 6:33 PM
A good point. There are differences. Hm...there are large black populations in mainly France, Belgium and Britain comming from the colonies. They would surely be offended. Our (Sweden's) colonies were mostly nearby - Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Germany (from viking age to the 19th century. We didn't find many black people there. We did however have the island of St Barthélemy (St Barths) in the west indies, for about a hundred years. I don't believe we brought many slaves home (slavery in Sweden was abolished in 1337) but shamefully traded a lot. We didn't outlaw slavery in the west indies until 1847 (later than in the yankee states) when it hadn't been profitable for a long time. Sorry for the rambling! Anyway I don't blame you for being concerned. Hopefully these visitors will feel that it's odd and thought-provoking. All the best!
PS. We also briefly had a colony in Delaware
Posted by: P-E Fronning | September 13, 2005 10:03 PM
Buzz...
He he. Friends of mine.
:-)
Posted by: Sebastian | September 14, 2005 4:44 AM