In, But Not Of

I don't want this to mutate into some sort of manifesto, but for those of you who keep asking what kind of traffic Galley Slaves is doing, this post from the normally excellent Patterico is why I don't have a site meter:

Traffic has been steadily dropping off. Today was a drastic drop.

What's the deal? Am I starting to suck that bad?

Or is this happening to other people?

Weird that this would happen the same day I top half a million visitors.

UPDATE: You know what this means--another request for you to tell people about the blog!

This is nothing against Patterico, whose blog I generally like quite a bit. But when you're driven to begging for readers, that's just not right. I mean, these things are just blogs, for cryin' out loud. I'll let you in on a secret. Shhhh, lean in closer so I can whisper: They don't actually matter.

Can they be fun? Sure. Can they occassionally be useful? You bet. But to the extent that blogs seduce people into whittling down their dignity--by writing about their boyfriends or their wives or their traffic or their hospital stays or their dogs or their penchant for salted, cured meats, all in the name of keeping the numbers up--they can also be quite pernicious.