In my ongoing effort to learn how to utilize the computer more to my benefit, I decided to create a project so that I could experiment with graphs, pie charts, mail merge, etc. I chose my Suite 101 articles to practice creating a database. I was interested in learning how to be more technically proficient than I was in seeking any particular statistical information.
I am still sitting here and shaking my head at the inadvertent revelation.
Since I’ve begun writing professionally, I use the periodical racks to keep up with current trends and attitudes. I have never gotten over the fact that a vast majority of magazines all promote themselves by referring to the subject of “sex” on their cover. It boggles my mind how most women’s magazines, especially, can keep coming up with different articles and or perspectives on the same topic every single month. Is sex really such an all-consuming conundrum for our society?
The answer is obvious of course, more obvious than even I was aware. “Sex” sells, pure and simple... even here on Suite 101! Yep, that’s what my simple project to learn how to make a graph turned up after I did all the data input from my articles.
The highest read articles, consistently, here under my little, far from titillatingly suggestive topic, “To Age or Not To Age,” are the ones that use the words “lust,” “sex,” and “dating,” or any other suggestive type word in the titles. What an absolute scream, considering how benign my articles really are in the context of what can almost be construed as false advertising. Do you catch the drift of what I’m saying, what I’ve clumsily discovered? In other words, if I really wanted to increase my readership, all I have to do is use the same ploy that most magazine publishers use.
Okay, with this little incident in mind, guess what I discover next. The Department of Health has recently stated that the greatest increase of people suffering with AIDS is in the senior citizen age group! Well, I don’t know about you, but this information not only caught me a little off guard, but it also confirmed my earlier “little” discovery regarding the readership of my articles, assuming that the majority of my readers have or are entering into that nondescript phase of middle-age puberty. Wow!
