followers

this whole concept of following online is so confusing... there are all sorts of ways to follow someone or something (blog, post, comments, users, articles, comments on articles, and let's not even begin to get into facebook and other sites)... here in this blogger world, there are email followers and widget followers and reading list followers and google plus followers and who knows what else... and the source of the confusion is the google blogger dashboard (as opposed to the google plus dashboard or any other dashboard google provides) has a link feature to supposedly indicate how many followers each blog has and then, after clicking, the unpredictability appears...

so on the party of living, a seldom visited or used blog i created some time ago when i was more optimistic about life's party (not that the party has ended, but there's just less time or enthusiasm or partying i feel like reporting but that's not the point of this entry... the point is, in this blog, the dashboard says there is one follower... clicking on the link, there is no follower there on the page that opens... and the google widget on the page itself says there are no followers... so why does the dashboard say there is 1 follower?...

yes, it is confusing... feel free to offer a simple explanation... perhaps google allows someone to follow privately and therefore only shows up as a number in the count, but nowhere else... or perhaps the follower is following in some other way of following so they show up in the count on the dashboard but not in the widget (and the question arises, where are they following from and even if they want privacy {we won't get into the whole stalking secretly aspect), how would knowing how they are following change or threaten their privacy?... knowing would help the blog writer know how people are finding the blog and who puts a blog out here to not be found, after all?)...

ummm, stop looking at me that way (lol, as if i do, huh?)... well, continuing this exploration, we come to RealTime™... seventeen (17) followers is the number linked on the dashboard and when that link opens we find fifteen (15) followers (so two remain in that limbo unknown place that the one from the party of living blog may be)... and then i did some exploring and found random people followed RealTime™ who knows when for who knows what reasons and only one made contact over the decade that RealTime™ has existed so i wonder if they clicked follow somehow somewhere and then forgot about it or if they actually follow silently secretly for some reason...

and then we come to ric-candor which is the blog where i collect and put my public profiles cuz, after all, if i am introducing myself to someone or some place online or the entire internet and anyone anywhere, i figure i ought to remember what i said and shared about myself if only to remember who i think i am at any given moment in time... and there, the dashboard says 1 follower and that follower is 2d6a0934-4f95-11e5-82db-1f911e3c1d68... yup, that is what i find when i click on the link and that 2d6a0934-4f95-11e5-82db-1f911e3c1d68 leads nowhere and i am the only one being followed by 2d6a0934-4f95-11e5-82db-1f911e3c1d68... so someone wants to know the real physical human offline me and offers no information at all, unless, of course, 2d6a0934-4f95-11e5-82db-1f911e3c1d68 is a friend who simply has not told me they follow ric-candor...

finally, for the google-blogger-blogspot blogs i started that have followers listed on the dashboard, we come to (e)thereal, which is this blog you are reading (and yes, this entry is way longer than this blog is supposed to be in terms of brevity of entries and i will likely put this entry in RealTime™ because that was the babbling blog when i had more time for babbling (and apparently people like babbling more than brevity, or perhaps this blog simply has too many entries daily for anyone to want to actually follow, especially if they follow by email or follow lots of other blogs, but then, the entries are supposed to be {and sometimes actually are} brief, but that's beside the point) with added babbling because, after all, that's what babbling is... but this paragraph was about this blog you are currently reading so let's get back to it...

yes, so (e)thereal, this blog, has 3 followers... only two show up on the followers page and i wonder who you two are... do we know each other offline?... have we had any contact?... the linked page says one of you is a student and the account was created in 2010... JJ?... just a guess... and the link on that profile leads to this unused blog... looks like one i might create, by the title and the visual look... if you are out there, say hello, whomever you are... and then there is someone i'd love to meet (yes you, your privacy shall remain private) but she has not been updating her blog since 2013 and i have misplaced email contact info... did we ever talk?... feels like we have been friends forever, so where are you now that i have time, aye? :)

and there is a journey through the followers listed on the dashboard of my google-blogger-blogspot account... i am happy i wandered through, even if it answered no questions, especially because i have some new out of the blue hope i might actually be cared about, even if most followers forget they clicked the follow button in a moment of interest some years ago... and steph, i hope you call :)

and anyway with any answers, feel free to share...

narf :)