Despite the weather today– fifty freaking degrees!  Sweatshirt weather!– it’s probably about time to start doing some retrospective posts on 2014, and I figure I’ll start with Posts of the Year, since it doesn’t seem super likely that anything will be changing positions between now and January 1st.  Here is last year’s edition; the rule for this year was that you had to be acquire the traffic after last year’s list to count for this one.  There are a couple of posts that would be on both lists, namely In Which I Hurt Myself and Acquire Toys and The 10 SF/(mostly) F Works that Meant the Most to Me, but this post is all stuff that’s new since I wrote the last one.

Also, we’re doing a top 11, not a top 10.

11. MOAR BUTTZ, a tale told with pictorial accompaniment:  January 16, 272 hits.  This post is why this is a top 11; this is probably my favorite post of the entire year– I spent the entire time during the events this describes planning the blog post, and I was literally laughing myself to tears while I was writing it.  I love this post.
10. In which I am still a bad student (pt. 2 of 3):  August 2, 2013, 286 hits.  This one’s interesting, and I had to think hard about whether to include it– because  technically I wrote it in 2013, but it didn’t catch on until 2014.  This is also the sole teacher post on the list, and is part of a three-part series on determining teacher quality.  It’s one of my more thinky pieces.
9. Creepy Children’s Programming Reviews: Super Why:    March 6, 299 hits.  True fact: at the time I wrote this, I was unaware that future seasons of Super Why actually added a talking dog to the cast.  I have nearly revisited this post on any number of occasions, because the talking dog took a show I already hated and catapulted it somewhere… else.  Somewhere darker.  “Hate” isn’t even the word anymore.
8. In which my kid is weird as hell: October 13, 316 hits.  There are a fair number of posts on this list that are generated somehow by my son; this one details his obsession with kicking hats that took over his life around Halloween.  It’s fun.
7. And none could say they were surprised: on #Ferguson:  November 25, 331 hits.  I’m very gratified that this post has gotten the attention that it has.  It’s the newest post on the list, too.  I’m rarely completely serious around here; this is one of those times.
6. On “awareness,” with swearing:   May 9, 367 hits.  I have a theory that the angrier I am and the more times I use the F-word in a post, the more popular the post is destined to be.  This one’s a little… intemperate.  It’s about slacktivism!
5. Creepy Children’s Programming Review: Color Crew: February 16, 480 hits.  The other thing that I need to do a lot to generate traffic?  Review stuff I don’t like, as you’ll see below.  I don’t dislike Color Crew as much as I dislike Super Why, although it’s a much, much weirder show.  Interesting fact:  all four CCPR posts (the other two are Peg + Cat and Curious George) are in my all-time top 20.
4. The Top 10 new (*) books I read in 2013: December 17, 2013, 577 hits.  This is another one that was technically written in 2013 but was written after the top 10 posts list, and therefore it got nearly all of its traffic in 2014.  The sequel to this is coming soon; right now my shortlist for my top 10 is 16 books long.  That’s too many.
3. This one has some bad words in it: September 5, 2013, 852 hits.  The third and final 2013-blew-up-in-2014 post; I got this one linked prominently in the comment thread on a Scalzi post, and it got a lot of attention.  I’m not entirely sure it deserves to be here; it just happened to have a section that was perfectly relevant to the conversation going on over at his place, so I linked and got lucky.
2. Think before you post: February 16, 930 hits.  This post combines lots of swearing and anger with a direct attack on a common Facebook meme, and ended up with a pretty high number of Facebook likes for one of my posts.  It got linked all over the place and still picks up little surges of hits every now and again.
1. SNOWPIERCER: I hated, hated, hated, hated, HATED this movie.: August 5, three goddamn thousand three hundred and seventy-one hits.  And, surprising absolutely no one, number one with a bullet, the goddamn SNOWPIERCER review.  I am actually tired of this post, if I’m being honest.  I hated this movie, although I enjoyed reviewing it, I haven’t come around to liking it since I reviewed it, and this post appears to have become home base for everyone on the Internet who sees this terrible, stupid little movie, wonders why it got such great reviews, and goes onto Google to search for like-minded individuals.  Its popularity blows away anything else I’ve ever written– note that this is one of the newer posts on the list– and it’s still a rare day that it isn’t my most popular post of the day.  I finally had to close the comments on it last week; people were starting to fight with each other and I am heartily tired of monitoring it.  Stupid post.  Stupid movie.

Anyway, that’s it: my 11 most high-traffic posts of 2014.  I will have to come up with new rules next year to disqualify the Snowpiercer post, as I’m sure that it will still be tops on the list.  It’ll be interesting to see what’s blown up in the meantime.

Anything that ought to be on here?  Feel free to wander through the archives all day.  🙂