The Numbers Game

I must be humorous. Really! At least, officially! This blog of mine has been listed as one of the "Top 13 Humor blogs in India". Well, last year Blogadda had listed it in the top five humor blogs (That badge by the side? THIS is what that is all about), and therefore to say that I must STILL be officially humorous is more to the point.
So what if I can count the LOLs and ROFLs in my blog on the fingers of one hand, with fingers to spare (and I have ONLY five, not even six)? THAT's only because my readers are laughing so hard that they have no energy to even type in the LOLs and ROFLs. Lately, I must have got a lot more humorous - my readers are so exhausted with laughing that they are unable to even type in their comments, leave alone the LOLs. But they know that I know they are coming around, and reading, and ROFLing. (I don't, really, but that is a general problem with the human race, innit? What you think I know and what I actually know very seldom coincide)
That, though, is not the purpose of this piece. ('Ah! Your pieces HAVE a purpose? News to me', you say? I am immune to all this. Been there, heard that, too often). This whole episode set me wondering about this numbers game thing.
Ever heard what the guy says who is ranked the first in anything? Does he say, "I am in the top five"? Nah, nothing of that sort. He says, "I came first". Precision, that is what he is all about. The guy who came in second? Also a votary of precision, unless of course the race was run only between the two of them.
What of the guy who came in third? (Well - actually my blog was listed in third place in this list but I did not read all that much into it. 'Got that in? Good') Does he believe in such precision? Maybe, but, if he is like me, he is more likely to say, "I am in the top three", coyly, and keep his fingers crossed that the audience would believe that he came in first and is too modest to say so. (Not likely with me, you say? I will have you know that I have a reputation for humility and modesty, carefully built up over the years on account of the fact that I have much to be humble and modest about).
Then you run into the next peculiarity. The man, who comes in fourth, acquires a lot more modesty than he otherwise displays. He may be the guy who jumps in the air and beats his chest, like the first cousin of our eons-old ancestors, when he comes in first. When he comes in fourth, though, it is very seldom you hear from him that he was in the top four (Unless, of course, there were only four in the list.) Overcome by an unnatural modesty, he says, "I was in the top five".
Now that strikes me as strange. We may not all be mathematical geniuses but we, at least, know all the numbers from one to ten and in the right order. Yet, somehow, when it comes to this 'top this-or-that', we skip from three to five and five to ten ("I was in the top seven"? Does that seem like something you heard recently, unless it was a list of seven) and so on, forgetting all intervening numbers and, even though saying so may lead your listener to believe that you were less than you really were. (Horror of horrors! They may think you came in fifth instead of fourth and it still does not put you off). Human beings are a very peculiar race indeed!
There is yet another problem with this numbers game. 'Top 13.....' of what total? I find that I do not know almost all of the others and I am sure that most of them are equally as astonished to hear that I, too, pollute the atmosphere they live in. How, then, am I sure that the judges knew ALL possible humor blogs? AND the people who adjudged the blogs had fine enough discernment to precisely measure the worth of them all? Were there blogs that did not feature merely because they went unread and were there blogs equally as good, if not better, which lost out only because they were not to the taste of the judges? Unlike Athletics (even there, it is the ranking among the participants only. If you came in first in Tamil Nadu, it did not make you faster than Bolt), most other things in life do not seem to admit of a clear identification of merit.
So, of course, when it comes to listings that do NOT count my blog in the top few, it is because the judges did not cover ALL the blogs OR their judgment is flawed OR both. But this one? Of course, it was manned by meticulous judges who went through ALL those millions of blogs with a fine discernment of quality - else how would they have found the incomparable merits of my blog?
Nothing gives you a better appreciation of the ability and stature of the judges than for them to find merit in your performance. It has always surprised me that people think that finding fault with other people's performances will gain them the reputation of being discerning in the eyes of the very people they find fault with. (If I were to say Peter was great and Paul was average, which of the two thinks I am the wisest person since Solomon and which thinks that it is a pity that God gave the gift of speech to people whose IQ was in the single digits? Of course, if I were also to say WHAT exactly was great about Peter, it helps cement my reputation, but it is not necessary with most people. On the other hand, if I say WHAT exactly is wrong with Paul, it would, at best, ensure that he thought of double digits - LOW double digits, of course - when he thought of my IQ.)
Meanwhile...
A well settled, finely divided and categorized blog in the humor field of content. A blog containing humor in its humor category as well as in its serious ones. I felt really lighthearted while going through this blog. The blogger is a well versed content writer and has a very attractive way of writing. Sarcasm imprinted without an offense is found in the articles. A must go through and a follow for this blog if you want to feel good after a busy day.
So, there! You better feel lighthearted after reading my blog!