Sunday, September 7, 2014

Southpaw's one year birthday, Google searches, and Tom C (again)

Twitter sent an email wishing me a Happy Twitterversary.  I started the Twitter handle right when I started the blog and sure enough, my first blog post was about one year ago. (Time flies!) It's been a great year and I've met some awesome people. My only regret is that I feel I was negative a bit too much. If you knew me in person, I'm not so much a Negative Nancy. Thank you for all your comments and personal emails over the past year. Here's to another fun-filled 52 weeks!

Now onto today's topic at hand -- Google searches.

First, a little background. I love random data and stats. (Which is surprising, since I got a horrible grade in Statistics when I took it in college.) I enjoy reading about which movie did the best at the box office, which TV show was the most watched for the week, and glancing at the New York Times Best Sellers List.

So, I became very excited with all the data and stats you're given as the author of a blog - including how people found my blog using a search engine. In the past year, most of the searches include "Gay Mormon" in some form or another, but lately, I've noticed an interesting trend. Here are some search terms that have led people to Gay Mormon Southpaw (and some were used more than once):

tom christofferson gay
todd christofferson brother
D. Todd Christofferson gay brother
tom christofferson 
Tom Christofferson gay LDS
picture of tom christofferson brother
Tom christofferson north star
tom christofferson boyfriend 
d. todd christofferson brother gay
elder d todd christophersons brother 
elder chrisofferson's brother is gay 

Yep, seems like a lot of people are curious about Tom Christofferson, the gay brother of Elder D. Todd Christofferson. I have no idea who is typing in these search terms. It could be a closeted gay Mormon who heard through the grapevine that an apostle has a gay brother. Or it could be a bunch of straight people looking for the same info. There's no way to know who these people are. But what does that tell me?  People Google stuff like this when there's a lack of knowledge among organizations, and are looking for some sort of confirmation.

So if the higher-ups from the church are reading this, maybe you should let Elder Christofferson talk about his brother in the next General Conference. I'm sure it would mean a lot. I would definitely be listening.