If you are ever looking to find a quick and easy way to spiral into a deep depression, I’ve got the fasted way to do it. I was perusing my recent stats on this blog and comparing it to my stats in April 2014, my best month of all time. I know exactly what they mean when they say comparison is the thief of joy. It was 10 times what my stats are now. There were a couple of reasons why April 2014 was my peak, but holy cow, this blog has been the Titanic after hitting the iceberg.

April 2014 started out with a banger of a post, my annual attempt at April Fool’s Day. Back then, I still had ideas, so that year I still tricked a few people. Now, my creativity and ability to trick people took as deep a dive as my metabolism. April’s also the time where I celebrate the anniversary of doing a full rotation around the sun, or in other words, my birthday. In 2014, it was also only the second time I celebrated my birthday by posting 41 things that made me bitter. People love long lists, but more importantly, they love a long lists of things to be bitter about. That year, my post got picked as Freshly Pressed (which was the editors pick of their favorite posts), so it was featured on the WordPress main page, and my WordPress traffic climbed to the Bitterosphere…for about a week.

I kept the momentum up for the rest of the month, so I had a little baby viral moment. I was collecting views, follows, likes and shares like kids collect Easter Eggs. I went viral on WordPress before virality was a thing. It was when viral meant you caught a disease, instead of the current meaning of getting famous for a little bit.

Now, my stats are so underwater that only Spongebob can find them. Some might think the reason that I don’t get traffic anymore is because I don’t write as much, that I’ve lost my bitter edge, that I’m not funny anymore, or that I don’t connect with the WordPress community as much as I used to. I’d like to blame WordPress because they don’t promote me as much as they used to, but that would just be a cheap shot at WordPress, and that would be petty, which I absolutely am.

The real reason is because I’m old and out of touch with the younger demographic. You know, the young, vibrant, 45-51 year olds. Now that I’m 52, I just don’t know how to relate with those young types.

It could be that I keep telling stories about my youth in the 70’s and 80’s. The youngies like to refer to that era as the 1900’s, which basically puts me in the same category as a 125-year-old born in 1900. In that sense, I can imagine them not being able to relate to a 125 year old. It certainly isn’t helpful for me to not know what Skibidi Toilet is. They also like to think me as that generation that “used to play outside”. They also think of my generation as “the ones that don’t know how to text.”

It doesn’t help that in my last semester of college, I took a class called Introduction to the Internet. It also doesn’t help that I didn’t have a smartphone until I was 35. It could be that the youth don’t relate to me because this post isn’t a Tik Tok, Snapchat.

It could be that when I text people, I use complete sentences, periods, punctuation, capital letters, and don’t use abbreviations.

It could be the reason they can’t relate to me is because when I was born, I didn’t have an Ipad surgically implanted in my hands, and didn’t grow up asking my parents “got any games on your phone?”

It could be that I knew a time where we had a phone in our house, with a cord, and that you hung it up when you were mad. It could be that I had to dial a phone manually by putting my finger inside a hole, twisting it until it hit a piece of curved metal, then released and repeated that six more times.

Speaking of phones with cords, the youth might not relate to me because I lived in the early days of the internet. When it started, you had to actually hit a button to enter it. Through something called dial up. The ancient method of getting on the internet involved going to AOL and clicking a button, irritating the phone so much that it shrieked out with an unspeakable alien language, and told everyone else in your house that they couldn’t use the phone. In other words, it sounded like a fax machine. For those youth unfamiliar with a fax machine, it was the early version of sending an email attachment.

It could be that I don’t relate to the youth, because I lived in a time where finding a new place involved an ancient artifact called a map. A map was an early manual version of Google Maps, except the voice wasn’t a pleasant British woman’s voice, but your annoying friends voice. The map didn’t automatically recalculate like Google Maps. Map recalculating was your friend turning the map in circles trying to figure out east and west, and then having to stop to help them figure it out. If there was a downtown with a bunch of one way streets, we knew we were cooked and just gave up.

Another reason why the youth might not be able to relate to my content is because I used to view movies in big rooms called movie theaters. They were dark rooms OUTSIDE our homes that we had to pay people to enter. Back in the 1900’s there was a movie called Star Wars. It came out in the year of our Lord 1977. In those ancient days, movies did not come to the home right after being in theaters. In fact, Star Wars didn’t come to home until 1982, a full 5 years later. The biggest reason why Star Wars was such a blockbuster back then, was because it stayed in the theater all summer and into the fall, because people knew if they didn’t see it then, they might never see it again.

Speaking of Blockbusters, we used to have these places that did allow you to watch movies after they left the theaters on those things mentioned above called VHS tapes. Blockbuster was a gathering place where young and old people would go to look at movies that recently left theaters. They would rent them for a few days, so they could get the theater like experience of watching them on our massive 12′ inch black and white TV’s with rotating antennas.

Another reason I might not be able to relate to the youth is because I had to hail a taxi instead of apping an Uber. I had to call Domino’s pizza for delivery, instead of apping Uber Eats to bring me food. It might be because when I got my degree in marketing, it was to work at an ad agency to write TV, magazine and radio commercials instead of doing Google, Meta and Tik Tok ads.

The biggest reason why I’m losing the younger demographic is because even if they accidentally came upon this blog post, they would just copy/paste it into ChatGPT, and use it as a source for their English paper. ChatGPT would just summarize it as an academic article talking about the hardships of reaching the younger demographic instead of sarcastic bitterness about losing his stats because he lost the youth demographic.

While the ten of us that actually read this lament about the bitterness of not being able to reach the youth, here are some Bitter Friday Giftures for ChatGPT to explain are Giftures are “moving memes”…

Looking for a quick and easy way…

My suggestion is to…

They say comparison…

They’re right…

My stats in April 2014…

My stats now…

In April 2014…

When viral just meant…

I could blame a lot of things for the downfall of my stats…

Or I could blame…

But in the end…

They might actually love this post…

Although, it’s probably more because…

I took a class in college…

While they grow up…

The original Star Wars was a blockbuster…

Speaking of Blockbusters…

The only way kids would be able to relate to this post…

ARRRGGHHHHH

Bitter Younger Demographic Ben