What I learned about the internet from Gorgo (lime) and ear infections

So here's something I've learned about how the internet works from this blog: if you have a blogpost named for something unique and somewhat obscure, that matches up with something people Google-search for, but that not many people have posted about (or would want to post about), you are more likely to turn up at the top of a search, which will make your post more popular, which will in turn make it more likely to turn up near the top of search results. It may not get a billion views - because it is unique and obscure and only a small number of people will care about it - but it will have a sort of staying power on the net, as long as a bunch of other people don't start writing about it, too.

Take, for example, the search phrase "sleep apnea and ear infections." Apnea itself - obstructed airways when you sleep, associated with loud snoring, gasping for breath in your (highly unsatisfying, oxygen-deprived) sleep, and occasional death by asphyxiation - is a somewhat niche phenom. It is often treated with a CPAP machine, which basically just blows air up your nose to keep your airways open. Some fifteen years ago, when I started on a CPAP machine, it was not commonly known by doctors or reported online that if you run your CPAP machine too high, you (apparently) can get ear infections, presumably as a result of bacteria being blown about inside your head; but it became obvious to me, back when I had my pressure set on 15, because I got ear infections - which I hadn't had since childhood - every few months. I turned down my settings, and the ear infections stopped; I found a way to strike a balance between wanting to breathe while I sleep and not wanting excruciating ear pain. 

And I wrote a blogpost about it, since no one else had done anything on the topic that I could see. Anecdotal evidence has to begin somewhere! This was back in 2008, and very soon after I posted it, I started to get comments from people who had experienced the same thing as I had. These days, there are tons of posts about sleep apnea and ear infections - the anecdotes have mounted and ENTs are now aware of the problem - so the traffic to my post has slowed; the post now turns up on the second page of Google results, after all sorts of more official medical reportage. But for awhile, I got comments every few months (it's now at 45, all reporting similar things), and over the years, this relatively obscure topic has gotten 5664 views. It pleased me a bit that my reportage has seemed to matter to people, and I guess when I go to my grave I can pat myself on the back for having spread the word on this matter: yay team. 

If "sleep apnea and ear infections" is no longer obscure enough to merit the sort of traffic my post got, there is a new post on the rise - a new obscurity on my blog that is generating comments and views. From 2013, the post reports on David M's discovery of a cache of the lime-flavoured chew bar Gorgo. While it is not quite of the paradigm-shifting import as my ear infections post, it has generated a respectable 934 views in the last seven years, and 9 comments: which really isn't bad when you consider that Gorgo - a memorably strange candy experience of yore, and the subject of many NO FUN "commercials" - has been  off the market for something like thirty years. Not many people remember Gorgo, and only a small fragment of those that do would bother to do an internet search for it, but for those that do - just try a Google search for "Gorgo lime," adding the "lime" to differentiate it from the monster movie - and you'll find that this very blog is at the top of the search results. It is, in fact - before I click "publish" on this - the only post (other than a couple of NO FUN vids) with a working link. 

Maybe David M. should do a special all-Gorgo CD to give people who comment on my post? That would be an M-like thing to do. He does a pretty good Richard Butler impersonation for his most recent...