A few months ago, my South African DJ friend Rufus Blairgowrie tracked me down again.
Rufus is a very strange individual, full of energy and zest, horny as hell, and can be quite the boor. He usually says what he thinks and takes no prisoners when doing so. And he recently got himself broadband access… which could spell the end of the internet.
Hide your women and daughters!
If nothing else, Rufus is a capable DJ and has his rare moments of sheer brilliance. The most recent one was when he suggested that I revamp and rename the old email dumping grounds — which apparently had quite a following at his previous place of employment. Who’d have thunk?
Thusly, The Dirty Thumb was borne out of the old HMVHumourList_bin Google Group.
Furthermore, it was also noted that my almost-abandoned “South African” humour blog/site/thing was pulling in quite a few surprise visitors, as these (capped) statistics indicate:Those same statistics also reveal which search engine queries yielded these hits.
Predictably, most visitors arrived via standard terms like –
“african jokes”, “south african jokes”, “jokes about south africans”, “johannesburg jokes”, “jokes about people from johannesburg”, “south africa crime and jokes”, “jokes of coloured people in south africa”, “joke crime south africa”, “van jokes, south african”
– or variations thereof but it’s phrases like –
“taxi warfare”, “taxi warfare- definition”, “what is taxi warfare”, “taxi warfare pictures in south africa”; “cool south africa personalized number plate”; “white exodus south africa”, “south africa population white emigration”, “how many whites are leaving sa”; “pledge regarding sa dengerous schools”; “how far is nylstroom from polokwane”, “how far is modimolle from polokwane”; “johannesburg stop at signals”; “affirmative action jokes”, “south african post 1994 jokes”, “apartheit jokes”; “coloured jokes for south africans”; “hoe hierdie pakkie staan”; “jokes about zuma and mbeki”; “personalised number plates available in south africa”; “brakpan jokes”, “sipho jokes”, “afrikaanse grappies”, “gatiep and maraai jokes”, “philemon joke”; “hiace jokes”
– that have some of the most interesting, racist and sensationalist undertones to them. And yes, South Africa’s troubles and unique social peculiarities have apparently reached a regular audience far beyond the country’s borders… or is it simply because many of its past inhabitants now reside outside of those borders?
The most puzzling search in this batch, however, was the query string “names of people in the mokopane area” while “jokes about lteracy” wins the prize for the most ironic.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) can be quite the science!
As a result, the plainly-titled “South African Jokes” site got spruced up ‘n bietjie and retro-fitted with material that previously appeared on the HMVHumourList, and elsewhere.
But no matter how “much” I revamped that joke site, it certainly cannot dare compete with what the witty designer of the fabulous “Heroes and Monsters” site has done — a truly remarkable job in stretching the templated limitations of the Blogger format.
And there you have August 2008, part 1.