One of the exciting things about blogging is being able to
track where in the world your writing is read, which countries show the most
interest and how many hits one gets on a monthly, weekly or even hourly
basis. Another interesting tracker which
is attached to the blog site I use shows where the traffic is coming from. Of course all the usual sites are there -
twitter, Facebook, my webpage, etc.
However, there is one source which puzzles and concerns me gravely - it
is not worth mentioning the name of the site (some may disagree), but it is a
site which promotes and shows pornography.
How and why is this site attached to a blogpage about fatherhood?
What I find most disturbing is that someone in the cyber
world seems to think that there is a link between a blogsite written by a
dedicated, doting father and the world of pornography. There is obviously a programmer out there (in
Russia!) who has built an algorithm to allow this porn site to search for
certain keywords. My guess is that when
searching for men, fathers, daughters, etc. this all leads to the very site. Those on the site then pick up a link to my
blog (somehow) and click on it. Now this
is either in the hope that it is a link to more porn or those who are now
leaving the porn site feel that there is some sort of cleansing in reading
about the dedicated, loving, pure world of fatherhood. In fact, the visual which these “readers” have
just got off on is someone else’s daughter and/or son.
This concerned me rather gravely, so I sent out a request
for help from a community of like-minded fathers. None of them were able to offer any insight
into how I could avoid such sites redirecting my work. Some of those in this online community were
of the opinion that traffic to my webpage and blogs was a good thing,
irrespective of where that traffic has been redirected from. Do I want readers? Yes.
Do I care where these readers are being redirected from? Of course.
I like to think that I am an extremely open-minded individual,
but pornography plays no part in my life and I certainly do not want it tainting
and poisoning the message which I am trying to promote through my blogs. It is not something I have ever particularly
enjoyed nor have I even found any interest in it. I would be lying if I said that I had never
seen porn before, but I count myself lucky when I say that on first viewing, I
felt so physically nauseous that I never bothered venturing there again; Game of Thrones or shopping for lingerie
for my wife is about as raunchy as it gets for me outside of my marriage.
Porn is out there; a billion dollar market which dominates
so many aspects of our world – seemingly on a relentless scale. That is all good and well for those who enjoy
it, but I do take offense when what I am trying to relay in my writing is the
exact opposite of what pornography promotes - exploitation, the robbing of
individuals and their personalities, and a world which ignores the beauty of
men and women beyond the flesh. Call me
fuddy-duddy, call me old-skool, but I am not willing to allow the parasites of
the internet world to plague the tales of a father and his beautiful young
daughter.
This is not a post about the dangers of porn, nor is it whether
or not people should be watching / looking at it. It is simply me saying: I did
not come knocking at your door, so do not come knocking at mine! You are not welcome here!
I've been a victim too of a similar thing - I googled the name of one of my blogs and found a tumblr account with the same name...I clicked on it and was disgusted to see the filth that was there.
ReplyDeleteIt's really upsetting that these sites take domain names and open social media accounts with the same user names...I worry that someone will think that disgusting site is related to me, but there's nothing that can be done. As you say...it's certainly not welcome.
I agree with you about caring where readers are coming from...both on the level that they are in those places in the first place and that these kinds of people (if I'm allowed to say that...) are visiting your site (family orientated).
Anyway, who knows, maybe they'll read your Christian post...God works in unexpected ways!
Thanks so much for reading and taking the time to comment Paul. You are so right, I never even thought about how the pornography post might lead some to the "Christian Home" post...let's hope God works His magic here :)
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