TODAY: The Twenty-Second Blogiversary Of JoeMyGod

Today marks the 22nd blogiversary of this here website thingy. Counting this one, we’re at 181,301 posts over 22 years, the last 17 of which have been without a full day off, although my posting on weekends is usually at a slower rate. As I’ve said on this day every year, whether I am insanely committed or am insane and should be committed – that is entirely your call.

I appreciate all of you for sticking with me all these years, particularly over the last few years after Hair Furor stormed back into office and when the entire world was turned upside down by the pandemic.

As I mentioned in this post last year, like most other mainstream and progressive sites, since the November 2024 election, JMG has seen a pretty big hit to our traffic due to folks seeking relief from the seemingly nonstop onslaught of bad news related to the actions of the Orange Ogre. Which is a totally understandable and probably healthy coping mechanism.

Bans of LGBTQ books, “Don’t Say Gay” laws, the seemingly unstoppable erosion of trans rights, the rise of ardently anti-LGBTQ Christian nationalism, attacks on Pride and drag events by state legislators and literal Nazis, and the ever-looming threat to same-sex marriage dominated our posts on LGBTQ issues over the last year.

We’ve won some of these battles, but we’ve lost a frightening number of them. And we’ve seen the literal history of LGBTQ people erased from federal websites and national monuments. Despite all that, we didn’t lose nearly as many readers as most other sites, for which I am grateful to you all. 

But relatively better times DO seem to be coming as Democrats storm the gates as the midterm election approaches. (Cross your fingers and pray to the noodly goodness of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.)

On the business side, I continue to refuse pitches from ad services seeking to load JMG with pop-ups, page takeovers, and full-screen videos because while they pay much better than static ads, they sure are intrusive and annoying.  

But that’s also why some of the ads you’ve seen lately on JMG have tended to be PSA types and other annoyingly ill-targeted “remnant” fillers. And to be fair, a lot of those ad dollars now go to social media “influencers” – a word that spellcheck still says doesn’t exist.

If you’re not seeing those ill-targeted ads, it’s likely because you’re among the around 60% of JMG readers who use ad blockers and therefore miss those forlorn messages from lonely young ladies wanting you to subscribe to their live-cam channel.

If you are seeing them, my apologies. Most ads are regionally targeted and/or tailored to the web habits of the reader, so if you see any ads that definitely do not belong on this “far-left radical” website, as Richard Grenell calls us, let me know. (Our list of banned ad content is long and MAGA-heavy.)

As I said last year on the topic of cratering ad rates, it’s the generous support of the JMG community that keeps the lights on around here. PayPal sends me a monthly tip jar recap, but for those who donate without a PayPal account and for other reasons I still don’t understand, I usually don’t get an email address to send a note of thanks. To once again steal a line from the fabulous Coco Peru, that bothers me.

On behalf of myself and our tireless tech support guy Jack, who deals with a lot of stupid nonsense at stupid hours, you have our eternal thanks for being part of the rollicking community of “homosexual buccaneers” and straight allies that fight the good fight. Thanks to Jack (and a newly licensed anti-bot/anti-AI program), we had virtually no downtime since our last blogiversary post. (Except for the day last June that Cloudflare took down most of the internet.)

Thank you for enduring my typos, my “Don’t Panic” messages, and for sending in news items. I get too many emails to respond to them all, but all of them are very appreciated. The fight continues but we’ve got the kids and righteousness on our side.

Help yourself to some punch and cookies. Please don’t let the cat out. Onward to year TWENTY-THREE!

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