Being a born cynic from the West of Scotland, it’s hardly surprising that when I noticed a distinct spike in blog hits yesterday, my heart sank.

Another bleedin’ scam, I thought. More time I need to spend monitoring, vetting and ‘cleaning up’ reactions, comments and subscribers to my wee blog of nonsense. I thought this was meant to be fun?!

But no! Further investigation revealed my blog post ‘Antisocial Media’ from 20th April, had been selected by WordPress for its daily ‘Freshly Pressed’ feature.

Yay!

Whoop-di-woo!

Nah – I’m still not buying it. So some wee spider-bot thing has stopped crawling over t’internet, and taken a breather on my URL Big deal! (Looks like I know what I’m talking about, eh?) 😉

Of course, I have no idea of what I’m talking about. None whatsoever, it appears.

So I contacted my pal AI for guidance and reassurance. And it seems ‘bots’ are not involved. Posts selected for the feature are picked by actual humans. Real people! Can you believe it?

Hmmnn. 🤔 Us Glasgow punters take a lot of convincing.

But, whisper it, despite our inbred ‘glass-half-full’ dour disposition, we do quite like a bit of praise for a job well done. It’s just we don’t generally shout about it and keep it very much to ourselves.

Sod that for a game of soldiers! Here’s what I found out about ‘Freshly Pressed.’

Freshly Pressed is a curated spotlight feature on WordPress.com that highlights standout blog posts from the community. Unlike the “Reader” feed or social media algorithms, Freshly Pressed is hand-selected by the WordPress editorial team. They look for posts that are “genuinely good”—thoughtful, well-crafted, and unique.

Wow! I’m uncharacteristically happy! That’s amazing! My wee blog! I’m so chuffed!

Ah … wait, a second, there, wee man. Your pal AI also says this:

* Approximately 409 million people view more than 20 billion pages on WordPress sites every single day.

* Readers digest roughly 70 million new posts daily.

*Users leave about 77 million new comments each day.

I think that perhaps puts your 200+ hits and 99 ‘Likes’ into perspective, eh? Not feeling so chipper, now are we?

You know – sometimes I’m so glad of my Scottish upbringing. At least I knew the joy and elation would only be brief. (sigh!) 😮‍💨

***** But please do ‘Like and Share,’ and help spread the word – I did quite enjoy that momentary feeling of achievement. *****
😉