Don’t blame us, you clicked on these things
Don’t blame us, you clicked on these things
( These are always fun to read and see what was popular and what wasn’t so much popular. Anything that Adam kid does is magic on any site and ours was no different. Below are our top 15 stories you jerkies clicked on the most with the author of them writing about the story. And oh yeah, then Moser’s two most popular stories as well)
1- Scott Motosports: A Day in the Life of Adam Cianciarulo Video
http://pulpmx.com/video/scott-motorsports-day-life-adam-cianciarulo
Swizcore: This video is of course on the top stories list for the year and it’s almost like cheating, it’s such a no brainer. The formula is simple: take one of the most charismatic racers since Travis Pastrana, at the onset of his highly anticipated career, put him in a humorous setting where he can improvise as he wishes and you’ve got a little nugget of gold. Everything this kid touches turns to gold, just like his lap around RV’s place on his Supermini; the most hits a PulpMX video has ever gotten, by a long, long way. Now if only he could touch his shoulder and turn it to iron or some other mineral that’ll get him through a series, wing intact.
Matthes: Most of this video was improvised right there on the spot with a rough idea of what we wanted to do. The thing was Adam gave us so much gold while just hanging out and not realizing he was actually making the video. There were a couple of REALLY funny things that we couldn’t put in here but as it was, I think it turned out great. My only instruction to Swizcore was “Don’t stop rolling” and AC did the rest.
Lissimore note- I don’t know what these guys are talking about, Swizcore wasn’t even there for this video. Here’s how the number one clicked on story on Pulp actually went down.
Lissimore: This was probably one of the easier videos I’ve made. While down in Florida this past spring at our annual filming trip, we had mic’d up AC for an interview but his ADD kicked in and you couldn’t pin him down as he darted around outside, screwing around, bs’ing with everyone, pretty much anything but sitting down for our interview. I had my headphones in for the mic pack and I realized I could hear everything he was saying and it was pretty funny so I just started rolling video on whatever he was doing.
Afterwards, I was going through the footage and I told Steve we could probably do a funny video with all the stuff we had. John Knowles from SCOTT agreed to back it and I threw together all the funny bits from the day.
It turned out pretty well – like Matthes said, there were a few bits that were even funnier that we couldn’t run but that kid gives you non-stop gold. Now if he could only stay healthy.
2- Hammerhead Designs: Silly Season Update
http://pulpmx.com/stories/hammerhead-designs-silly-season-update
Thomas: No surprise here, silly season updates are always a big draw. Even for myself, there are hours upon hours of conversation concerning the multitudes of possible scenarios. When I go back and review my thoughts from May 28th, I wasn’t too far off base with most of the predictions. The big bombshell was RV’s departure to Europe and I certainly didn’t see that coming. I didn’t expect Peick to end up at JGR and when I think back, it was almost a given that Hahn was going there. Things change, though, and Peick made a strong case for himself as the summer wore on. Tickle would end up at RCH again which wasn’t a stretch but we are just now getting confirmation of that, 6 months later. Another funny aspect was Weimer being linked to virtually everyone yet ended up in the most unlikely of spots. I always like looking back to see how right or wrong I was when the music has stopped playing and the chairs are spoken for.
Matthes: I always am amazed by how many people love this silly season stuff. It never fails and boy does it sometimes piss riders and teams off when you report on what’s going to happen/has happened/has a chance to happen. I always tell the teams I deal with that people love to read about it, bench race about it and they should be pumped that real live people CARE about their teams or career. You don’t think say, Team 5150 Energy Drinks would LOVE it if someone cared about what they were doing?
3- The Decision
http://pulpmx.com/stories/decision
Matthes: This was a post of a German moto mag story I did on Reed’s decision to switch to Kawasaki. It’s no secret that Chad had a bit of a mini-shootout on KTM, an RCH Suzuki and a Kawasaki and although people were telling me the KTM was in the lead at the time, he ultimately chose Kawasaki and it looks like a great choice. I got some real good quotes from his mechanic Lars Lindstrom on this story (at one point he told me “I hope Chad’s not mad at me for telling you this stuff”) and Reed himself. I just wanted to take the readers behind the scenes on what went on and Chad himself made a comment on Twitter that the story was “close” to what happened. I thought it was pretty spot on from talking to people on his team and the OEM’s that were involved but hey, whatever- I’ll take “close”.
4- Project 90 Rebuild #3
http://pulpmx.com/stories/project-90-rebuild-3
Matthes: I don’t know why story #3 in this rebuild was the most viewed, who knows what goes into that stuff—time of day posted, length it’s up in the main box, etc, etc—to make it #1 in the series but all five of the #project90 stories were popular. Lots of comments on the Pulpmx Facebook page as well about this rebuild of a 24 year old bike. People love two-strokes, there’s a strong segment of people that believe the sport was never better than all the riders were on two-stroke’s (I don’t agree but some things WERE better) and they love that sound. Myself, ehhh, whatever, but my mission of getting off the couch and back into the garage was accomplished with this build. And once I had collected everything the bike came together really fast. And I think it turned out better than I expected.
5- Hammerhead Designs: 250 Silly Season Update
http://pulpmx.com/stories/hammerhead-designs-250-silly-season-update
Thomas: More silly season here. As I said before, who is going where will always be a popular subject. I am happy to say that I was almost exactly right on most of these teams and riders. There seemed to be much less confusion in the 2015 picture for the 250 class. The one rider that caught me by surprise was Joey Savatgy. Mitch Payton and the Pro Circuit team signed him and from what I heard, it was a last second decision between PC and Geico. Blake Baggett ended up leaving this 250 class altogether and will be the lone soldier for Yosh Suzuki. This article is a point in the “JT is in the know” column. Yes, I am indeed patting myself on the back and it feels oh so good.
6- Hammerhead Designs: Going, Going, Gone
http://pulpmx.com/stories/hammerhead-designs-goinggoinggone
Thomas: These email exchanges are a much more civilized peek into a typical conversation between Steve and myself. There is much more name calling and ridicule involved in our daily text message exchnages but we do debate many topics on a daily basis. This particular episode was about Justin Barcia’s move to JGR Yamaha after a lifetime with Honda. The jury is still out on how this goes but it hasn’t exactly been stellar thus far. He had a very average Monster Cup and his Europe swing could be considered underwhelming as well. He escaped serious injury with that scary crash in Genoa and should be 100% at Anaheim. The pressure is on this team to perform after their rough JS7 experience so I expect all hands on deck to make this successful. This is one of the more interesting changes for 2015.
7- Project 90 Rebuild #4
http://pulpmx.com/stories/project-90-rebuild-4
Matthes: Two-stroke fever man!
8- Scott Motosports: DV934 on A1
http://pulpmx.com/stories/scott-motorsports-dv934-a1
Matthes: Getting ex-pro’s like JT or David Vuillemin to talk about what’s going out there on the track is a bonus for you readers. And DV is a pretty smart guy with strong opinions. Which makes it a must-read and lots of you people agreed. Crazy that his first report on the first race made the list but hey, that’s what you people said.
9- Swizcorner: The Atlanta Punt
http://pulpmx.com/swizcorner/swizcorner-atlanta-punt
Swizcore: I’m not real surprised this made the list for 2014. I am always more than happy to breakdown the film when something is caught on camera in a race that is super controversial. Ironically, the controversy surrounding this instance wasn’t the act (that it was obviously-though inexplicably-intentional), it was the incredible attitude of Mike Alessi regarding the incident. At 3 different times he had 3 totally different explanations for what happened and why it happened. The fact that it included an Alessi made the fan debate over this episode even more flammable. Fans love to debate the hot topics of sport and the fact that I took the great footage Feld provided and made it easier to see what was really going on in real time, well, that gets a lot of views. In reviewing this Swizcorner to write about it, I even found myself watching all the videos multiple times again. Controversy! People love it.
10- Pulpmx Show Kenny Roczen Interview Transcribed
http://pulpmx.com/stories/pulpmx-show-kenny-roczen-interview
Matthes: Not too many people win titles with a company and then say ‘see ya’ but that’s exactly what Kenny Roczen did. And this transcribed interview of Roczen’s from the Pulpmx Show made the list. Kenny’s a great interview and he’s pretty honest so his thoughts on why he switched, whether it had anything to do with money and the differences between steel and aluminum frames was pretty interesting. And you people seemed to like it also.
11- Supercross Purse Rankings
http://pulpmx.com/stories/supercross-purse-rankings
Matthes: Fans are always interested in what the riders are making from their contracts or gear or whatever. Promoters don’t always want you to know what they are paying out which should tell you right there that it’s not enough right? Anyways, we took the not-easy-to-find SX purse structure and added up the 450SX positions and printed out what they made. We did this a few different times throughout the year and you people liked it.
12- The Crash Olympics
http://pulpmx.com/stories/crash-olympics
Matthes: For a few weeks in a row we watched riders or industry people post videos of their horrific crashes in supercross and I got the idea of trying to judge them like it was the Olympics. Pretty good idea yes? Anyways, I contacted each rider and asked them if this was ok or if they could send me the videos they posted. None of the guys were seriously hurt in these get-off’s (which is amazing) and Swizcore did a bang-up job of building the story. And by the way, I still think Peick’s should’ve been the winner.
13- Moto XXX: The Complete Oral History
http://pulpmx.com/moto-xxx-complete-oral-history
Matthes: The story that just about killed me. Or Weege anyways. I had started this thing at the beginning of 2013 by going around the pits and gathering quotes from people that were involved in this team. I myself worked there and thought about all the fast riders or mechanics that went on to factory jobs through the Moto XXX program and thought that it would make a great story. And I was around a lot in that first year with Watson and Deegan (although both of them liked my rider Ty Birdwell and didn’t like me) and knew some of the stories behind the scenes. It was SO much work to track these guys down and transcribe some 20,000 words. And then Racer X waffled on running it in the magazine (I hadn’t told anyone I was really doing it so I can’t blame them that much, no one “approved” the story y’know?) and I was going to run it on Pulpmx until they relented. Then we couldn’t get photos which led to a long delay and eventually RXI going with some cool illustrations. I also couldn’t get 10 years of XXX into a 2200 word mag story so I focused on the first year and the rest of the years we ran on Racer X Online.
Then once we started running it people that weren’t contacted for the story got upset at me and started texting and calling me. I had made a pretty herculean effort to get all these people to get me quotes and couldn’t get everyone (original owner Kurt Haller refused to talk to me for some strange reason. I had heard it was because I posted on Vital MX one time that they owned me money-which they did and still do. I still thought that was a strange reason years later to not talk to me about what a massive mark they made in motocross but hey, his loss) and had to make some stands. Well, despite NO ONE else calling ANYONE from Moto XXX for their stories and despite the hours and hours and hours that I put into this story for no extra money and just my love of this team and idea, I still think I got shit on by some people for leaving them out or whatever. Then I was accused of putting stuff in there that didn’t happen when all I did was transcribe people’s words to me. How the eff do I know what they tell me isn’t true or not?
I’ve never worked harder on a story and after it ran on Racer X Online, I wanted to preserve this in one spot where people could check it out. And enough of you did to make it into the top 15 of 2014. Thank you for caring like I do. And now I know to never do anything like this ever again.
14- Classic Steel: 1992 YZ250
http://pulpmx.com/stories/look-back-old-moto-mags/gps-classic-steel/gps-classic-steel-75-1992-yz250
Blazier: It is pretty interesting that that Classic Steel #75 on the 1992 Yamaha YZ250 is the one that ended up making the cut this year. I am always fascinated by what articles seem to get the most traction with readers. Sometimes I put a ton of research into an article that I personally find super interesting (like the story of Honda’s first CR250 earlier this year) and nobody seems to notice. Then other times, I will put out one on a recent bike that is pretty boring to me and I get all kinds of feedback. In the end, you just never know.
That is why I try and mix things up and jump around between eras when I do these articles. Some guys (like Matthes for instance) don’t like the old bikes, while others only dig the stuff from the nineties and newer. Personally, I think that is why a bike like the ’92 YZ performs well. It is old enough to be nostalgic, but not so old that most guys never rode or competed against it. Plus you have the Bradshaw factor, which can’t be overstated. The 1992 season was legendary, and Bradshaw took this bike to the brink of the title, only to suffer the highest profile melt down in the history of the sport. That alone, makes the ’92 YZ250 a bit of a touchstone for all of us involved in moto at the time. Either that, or the PulpMX fan base just has a thing for magenta. As always, thanks for reading!
15- Swizcorner: Banned Substance
http://pulpmx.com/swizcorner/swizcorner-ban-substance
Swizcore: These types of Corner’s are always a little tough to write. I knew who had been caught in the net of the WADA testing and what the substance was but with nothing officially out there, I had to write about it in generalities. It’s crazy thinking about how long ago I wrote this and we only just last week found out the punishment for the infringement. Although there were no specific facts divulged in my Corner, I wrote it as honestly as I could based on what I knew and then went back and removed the specifics, so as to not implicate James or the substance.
Honorable Mention: Moser’s two articles inside the top 100
Moser: Another year has come and gone and yet again I’ve come up ” Just Short” of having one of my columns in the top 10, 20 or even the top 50 of most read articles on PulpMX. It’s not from a lack of effort on my part. I’ve changed up my articles and formats to keep them fresh. Where else can you read a text conversation with some of your favorite riders? My desire to be amongst the most read articles on PulpMX is no secret and here is a Short list of my attempts to increase my number of readers. I was convinced that tweets and/or links to my articles was the missing piece to becoming the most read PulpMX article, I was wrong. No matter who or how many people I convinced or tricked into tweeting a link to my articles there was no noticeable difference in page clicks. Not even the elusive RacerX website page link could give me the bump in readers I needed. They say timing is everything so I figured if I timed an article around an off week with minimal moto news then surely people wood be bored enough and desperate enough to read one of my articles, but apparently people wood rather read nothing then my content.
This year my most read articles were my Chicken interview and my Seattle Smooth DBO debacle. The Seattle Smooth article is probably the worst story I’ve ever written for PulpMX. To say it was heavily edited is an understatement, most of what happened that weekend will never be spoken about again.
Ironically my Chicken interview was also edited (what is it with DBO & Chicken?). I asked Chicken an innocent enough question “what did you do today?” and he told me. It’s safe to say Chicken doesn’t live like the rest of us and we had skip over some parts of a day in the life of Chicken. So heres my newest theory on what articles get the most page views. Blaziers articles always get the most views and he writes about vintage bikes. My two most read articles were about past legends of the sport. So it’s obvious the younger fans of the sport can’t read, only the older generations know how to read. My lack of readers has nothing to do with the high quality content I provide and everything to do with the fundamental flaws in our society and youth.
