This website that you’re on was my bright idea in Jan. 2013, to serve as a showcase for my writing. Thirteen years later, the site has had 878,549 views, and 661,560 visitors in total. In 2025, it got 111,836 views, and there were 81,711 visitors. Eighty-one thousand visitors. Let me say that again, eighty-one thousand, seven hundred and eleven people read something on this site. I have published 492 posts to date, Feb. 2026.
And the weirdest part of all this is that I write what I please, and I write about books that interest me. I do what I want because I’m the only person involved. I always say to people who want to get to know me – just read my posts on Sevencircumstances. Everything I care to reveal is in there.
Poetry is the problem
The graph, below, shows which pages and post have got the highest views of all time. It’s clear that Sevencircumstances is mainly useful as a guide to poetry – what it is and how it works. That’s not surprising. Poetry is hard to get your head around, and though many handbooks have been written about it, it is tricky to find something that is simple and easy to understand. Since I write about poetry in ways that make sense to me, it is simple and easy to understand. The other top posts and pages are about strange literary phenomena.
Google loves staying power
Of course, another contributor to the high traffic is Google’s search spiders. The site is steady, clean, and current. The information is reliable and consistent, and has only one author, me – duly known and registered. I haven’t been sued by anyone for anything on this site. Google likes that.
But here is what I am most chuffed with. With which I am most chuffed? Yikes. Dangling participle aside, I am glad that I have been able to spread the word about my favourite authors and books. And I’m glad that these numbers have no correlation to the number of likes or comments on my posts. I never ask people to subscribe or like. I am not a YouTuber. But, the Internet is just that, a network. And this site is linked to my other website, Codaes-music, to my music accounts on streaming platforms, and to my page on Instagram (IG). IG is the only social media site that I’m on, mainly to stay updated on certain musicians and the music industry.
It has led me being seriously puzzled about this whole business of likes:
Hundreds of likes of my comments
I am mortified at the fact that two of my comments on posts on IG have gotten hundreds of likes, as you can see on the screenshots. And my other comments are not far behind. Why in God’s name would anyone add a ❤️like to another ❤️like on a comment, and not add a ❤️like to the post itself? What, you can’t figure out something to say for yourself? You don’t like the original poster, or the person featured in the post? Or do you think you will get another follower if they see that you like their comment? Or do you think the post has had enough likes already? One or two likes on my comment, fine, especially if you add your own comment in response to mine. But 665? 1,807? That’s crazy.
These people – if they are people – do not know that the reason that I wrote the comment, and how I wrote it, is because commenting is what I’ve been doing for decades on Sevencircumstances. They have no idea of the source of the comment, or the context, or who the “Cōdae” who commented (me) is. I have a sneaking suspicion that many of these likes were put on by bots. This bothers me because I am more concerned about authenticity than the average IG-er.
I’ve often written about authenticity and the reliability of sources here, where I take responsibility for verifying facts and sources. And I’ve rarely been wrong. Also, I am a human, writings for humans, about humans. I have no interest in machine-generated posts or comments. But, IG is rife with unattributed contents. The worst I’ve come across is an account called “Thackray of England”. (I assume there are others that are way, way worse than that.)
Outing the fakes (that’s you, Thackray)
Ironically – yes, you are.
The posts from “Thackray of England” are usually poems, old-fashioned in form, strictly rhyming, on pastoral subjects – pets, farm animals, the seasons, love, old age, sitting by the fireplace, etc. I first thought they were poems by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) a Victorian novelist, satirist, and poet, best known for Vanity Fair. Then I thought that Thackray was a person. It (it!) is not: “Thackray of England – Discover Thackray, an English art house creating the world’s rarest silk scarves.” What a claim to fame.
It will take a lot of digging to find out who exactly is behind this brand. The website has no names, no physical address. Many people on IG have asked in the comments who the poet is. So did I. No answer from Thackray of England. By this time, I strongly suspect that the poems are A.I.-generated. Most people cannot rhyme so perfectly, nor imitate late 19th century/early 20th century styles so well. Nor spin out such carefully curated scenes. Nor write such lengthy, epic poems. So, for lack of transparency from their side, I have unfollowed them. But, as you can see by the verse, above, they can be quite convincing.
If I’m wrong about Thackray of England, and there is an actual human poet writing the poems in their posts, my apologies. And do tell! Thackray of England probably thought this tactic would get them lots of interest. But hell hath no wrath like a cheated poetry-lover. As you can see, even my hokey comments get more love than their poem posts.
The lesson is, I shall stick to my guns and carry on like this with Sevencircumstances, for as long as I feel like it.
And with that, tamam shud. Let’s get on with 2026.
Here’s an example of how they could have done it
My prompt, in DeepAI Text, took the algorithm less than one second to generate a poem to spec:
Slick, huh? Not even half-rhymes – full-on rhyming in couplets. But it lacks personality and depth of feeling. A real artist could do this a hundred times better, and actually write something that moves you. And like I always say, if something looks too good to be true, run it past Grok. You’ll soon find out.
SEVEN CIRCUMSTANCES 
This website that you’re on was my bright idea in Jan. 2013, to serve as a showcase for my writing. Thirteen years later, the site has had 878,549 views, and 661,560 visitors in total. In 2025, it got 111,836 views, and there were 81,711 visitors. Eighty-one thousand visitors. Let me say that again, eighty-one thousand, seven hundred and eleven people read something on this site. I have published 492 posts to date, Feb. 2026.
And the weirdest part of all this is that I write what I please, and I write about books that interest me. I do what I want because I’m the only person involved. I always say to people who want to get to know me – just read my posts on Sevencircumstances. Everything I care to reveal is in there.
Poetry is the problem
The graph, below, shows which pages and post have got the highest views of all time. It’s clear that Sevencircumstances is mainly useful as a guide to poetry – what it is and how it works. That’s not surprising. Poetry is hard to get your head around, and though many handbooks have been written about it, it is tricky to find something that is simple and easy to understand. Since I write about poetry in ways that make sense to me, it is simple and easy to understand. The other top posts and pages are about strange literary phenomena.
Google loves staying power
Of course, another contributor to the high traffic is Google’s search spiders. The site is steady, clean, and current. The information is reliable and consistent, and has only one author, me – duly known and registered. I haven’t been sued by anyone for anything on this site. Google likes that.
But here is what I am most chuffed with. With which I am most chuffed? Yikes. Dangling participle aside, I am glad that I have been able to spread the word about my favourite authors and books. And I’m glad that these numbers have no correlation to the number of likes or comments on my posts. I never ask people to subscribe or like. I am not a YouTuber. But, the Internet is just that, a network. And this site is linked to my other website, Codaes-music, to my music accounts on streaming platforms, and to my page on Instagram (IG). IG is the only social media site that I’m on, mainly to stay updated on certain musicians and the music industry.
It has led me being seriously puzzled about this whole business of likes:
Hundreds of likes of my comments
I am mortified at the fact that two of my comments on posts on IG have gotten hundreds of likes, as you can see on the screenshots. And my other comments are not far behind. Why in God’s name would anyone add a ❤️like to another ❤️like on a comment, and not add a ❤️like to the post itself? What, you can’t figure out something to say for yourself? You don’t like the original poster, or the person featured in the post? Or do you think you will get another follower if they see that you like their comment? Or do you think the post has had enough likes already? One or two likes on my comment, fine, especially if you add your own comment in response to mine. But 665? 1,807? That’s crazy.
These people – if they are people – do not know that the reason that I wrote the comment, and how I wrote it, is because commenting is what I’ve been doing for decades on Sevencircumstances. They have no idea of the source of the comment, or the context, or who the “Cōdae” who commented (me) is. I have a sneaking suspicion that many of these likes were put on by bots. This bothers me because I am more concerned about authenticity than the average IG-er.
I’ve often written about authenticity and the reliability of sources here, where I take responsibility for verifying facts and sources. And I’ve rarely been wrong. Also, I am a human, writings for humans, about humans. I have no interest in machine-generated posts or comments. But, IG is rife with unattributed contents. The worst I’ve come across is an account called “Thackray of England”. (I assume there are others that are way, way worse than that.)
Outing the fakes (that’s you, Thackray)
The posts from “Thackray of England” are usually poems, old-fashioned in form, strictly rhyming, on pastoral subjects – pets, farm animals, the seasons, love, old age, sitting by the fireplace, etc. I first thought they were poems by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) a Victorian novelist, satirist, and poet, best known for Vanity Fair. Then I thought that Thackray was a person. It (it!) is not: “Thackray of England – Discover Thackray, an English art house creating the world’s rarest silk scarves.” What a claim to fame.
It will take a lot of digging to find out who exactly is behind this brand. The website has no names, no physical address. Many people on IG have asked in the comments who the poet is. So did I. No answer from Thackray of England. By this time, I strongly suspect that the poems are A.I.-generated. Most people cannot rhyme so perfectly, nor imitate late 19th century/early 20th century styles so well. Nor spin out such carefully curated scenes. Nor write such lengthy, epic poems. So, for lack of transparency from their side, I have unfollowed them. But, as you can see by the verse, above, they can be quite convincing.
If I’m wrong about Thackray of England, and there is an actual human poet writing the poems in their posts, my apologies. And do tell! Thackray of England probably thought this tactic would get them lots of interest. But hell hath no wrath like a cheated poetry-lover. As you can see, even my hokey comments get more love than their poem posts.
The lesson is, I shall stick to my guns and carry on like this with Sevencircumstances, for as long as I feel like it.
And with that, tamam shud. Let’s get on with 2026.
Here’s an example of how they could have done it
My prompt, in DeepAI Text, took the algorithm less than one second to generate a poem to spec:
Slick, huh? Not even half-rhymes – full-on rhyming in couplets. But it lacks personality and depth of feeling. A real artist could do this a hundred times better, and actually write something that moves you. And like I always say, if something looks too good to be true, run it past Grok. You’ll soon find out.
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