Saturday 5 July 2008

(Anti-) conspiracy theorists swarm at harmless blog

The numbers of visitors to this blog increased exponentially yesterday. A wave of sudden interest in my new collection of stories, to be published by Salt in October? (Pre-ordering facilities available here.) Well, no. Nothing so flattering, or wise.

The posts that get most attention generally have something more prurient to recommend them (although my story Nipples might be just what some of them are looking for. It's in my new collection of stories, to be published...). On David Isaak's advice I entitled one post Hot Sex in San Francisco, and a lot of people looking for naughtiness must have been disappointed by the image of a rather elegant Art Deco façade. I'm also used to the post showing Berlusconi as nature intended (apart from the hair transplant, face lift and liposuction) getting an inordinate amount of attention, and yesterday was no exception.

But what really pulled the punters in is a post I wrote ages ago about the third tower at the WTC site and the mystery surrounding its collapse. It was my only foray into conspiracy theory territory and I was soundly told off by someone who led me into a world in which Robert Fisk is regarded as a dangerous god-hating commie sodomitic lunatic, so clearly a man to be trusted (how transparent does irony need to be? I love Robert Fisk!).

What I'd like to know - because I'm really not that obsessed by 9/11 - is what happened yesterday to make so many people google third tower and end up on my blog. Any ideas?

Update: OK, now I know why. BBC2 is showing a documentary about the third tower tomorrow night, and my post comes up on the first page of Google searches. Living abroad, I can't download BBC stuff (and if anyone knows how this might be circumvented I'd be very interested to hear), so I won't be watching it.

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