Interesting. Ampersand is one of the most popular and respected bloggers (Alas, A Blog) on the liberal/gender feminist blogosphere. One of his avocations is to distort and then critique my work, to visit my BBs, etc. This, despite the fact that I have never posted on his site or attacked him in response. When am I going to get to the 'interesting' part, you ask? Right now. Ampersand sold his domain name to a porn site who is using it to boost its ranking on seach engines. (See Witchypoo's explanatory post entitled "Fuckery and Betrayal".)

CAVEAT: I have defended pornography both as freedom of speech and a valuable aspect of freedom of sexuality. My commentary is not intended as a slam at porn.

A feminist blogger and former fan of Amerpsand expands on the advantages of this purchase to the porn site, "Large search engines rank search results based on the link text they are linked by (to determine their relevance to a search term), the frequency by which a site is linked by those particular link texts, and the popularity of the sites that link the pages pulled up in the search results (to determine how high in the total search results a particular page will be listed). As a super-popular blog which boasts incredible traffic, by buying the Amptoons domain name and putting links to his own pornography sites on the index page, the pornographer was able to capitalize on the domain name’s existing popularity and boost the rankings of his linked sites over others pulled up by the same search query." Those who click on the blog and, so, drive up its traffic also contribute to ranking of the hard-core porn site who nows own the domain and hocks its ware on other of its pages. (For more of the dynamics of how Ampersand's domain name may be used, see Google's page on SEOs.)

In short, everyone who has linked to Ampersand's blog or reads it is promoting pornography -- and one company in particular -- by boosting its rank. This is key to a porn site's success as people searching for porn usually access the top ranked sites and never make it down to #101 on the list. Of course, those who link to Ampersand do so because they share his politically-correct liberal/gender feminist bias. This means that, for many of them, supporting porn is equivalent to a black rights activist supporting the KKK.

So what? Couldn't readers and those who link just shun Alas a Blog? Yes....if they know about. There is no link to porn on Ampersand's blog or obvious change. As Violet from The Reclusive Leftist blog explains, "Barry [Ampersand] didn’t bother to tell any of his readers about this until someone discovered the links and asked him what the fuck was going on. Even now I’m not sure most of his readers are aware of it, since Barry’s explanatory post didn’t allow comments and so rapidly sank to the bottom of the list." Indeed, from the shock and outrage being expressed across the feminist blogosphere, next to NO ONE realized what had passed.

Why did Barry become -- as many former associates are calling him -- 'a pimp? (I don't happen to share that opinion, BTW. I prefer 'hypocrite'.) He is quite candid: for the money. Witchypoo comments, "Well known, male, ‘pro-feminist’ blogger and cartoonist of long standing with large and (mostly) loyal readership finds his site is beoming too costly to run and he’s in a bit of a financial pickle. What do you think he does? What would you do? Find a cheaper host? Go to your readership for suggestions and support, maybe. Or solicit advertising from feminist-friendly organisations, perhaps. There are a number of viable options to choose from - some more palatable than others. This blogger chose the least palatable option of all." (Heart, at Women's Space, expands on this theme.)

What a weasel that man is! Whether you like or hate my beliefs, I live them. I write under my own name and -- as with the Independent Institute that appears prominently on ifeminists.net -- I identify who affiliates with my domains.

Must get some work done.
Wendy