Top 10 Posts of 2011, Part Two

Yesterday, I started my countdown with the the most-read posts from #10 to #6. Here are the top five, based on total visits from Jan 1, 2011, to today.

#5 Interview with FEMEN's founder, Anna Hutsol 

This post wasn't even original, it was a repost from a Facebook interview I did with Anna through her translator/community manager, Eugene Smirnov, on Osocio. It was short and sweet, as she picked and chose the questions she would answer, but any FEMEN post immediately gets the interest and support of their global activist community and associated voyeurs.

And yes, the post contained boobs.


#4 Nude activism continues to take over the internet

No, my posts are not all about nudity and sexuality. But it's a testament to the power of those primal forces, in activism as well as advertising, that my top posts mostly involve naked people.

This one was both interesting and amusing. After Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei's assistant Zhao Zhao was legally harassed for "spreading pornography online" with this picture, supporters started a nude protest blog called "Listen, Chinese Government: Nudity is NOT Pornography".

It's pretty weird. But in the tradition of PETA, FEMEN and "nude photo revolutionary" Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, it certainly gets them noticed.


#3 He's a straight talkin' PETA with a letter for the U of M...

Speaking of PETA, my distaste for their shock-and-eww tactics is a common topic here. But the PETA post that was my third most read of 2011 was neither. It was a personal appeal by one of my personal rock gods, Iggy Pop, to his alma mater to stop using live animals to train students in field medicine for the survival flight course.

It was a very well-written and rational appeal from a man who once described himself as "a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm". He even signed off with "Thanks for your time"!

Iggy has gone on to do more radical stuff for PETA, but to me this was his shining moment of elder statescraft.


#2 Disney's The Little Mermaid's sexual coming-of-age story, as told by her hipster meme

This was something I did on a winter weekend out of boredom. The Hipster Little Mermaid was a thing at the time, and I thought it would be fun to try to make a narrative out of it.

Yes, writers are sick people. But the internet is even sicker, and apparently any content that combines a teenage Disney Princess with the word "sex" is enough to bring them in like fruit flies on red wine. Even if there is no actual sex in the post, just a lot of English Major tomfoolery.

You can read the whole thing here.

#1 NZ church keeps up its irreverent Christian holiday ad tradition

As much as people love a good post about sex or nudity, blasphemy was the draw of the year. Despite being less than two weeks old, this post about the latest Christmas billboard by St Matthews in the City Church in Auckland, NZ, quickly took the lead in pageviews.

It's a beautiful ad, with an important message. According to Vicar Glynn Cardy:

"It's real. Christmas is real. It's about a real pregnancy, a real mother and a real child. It's about real anxiety, courage and hope. This billboard portrays Mary, Jesus' mother, looking at a home pregnancy test kit revealing that she is pregnant.   Regardless of any premonition, that discovery would have been shocking.  Mary was unmarried, young, and poor.  This pregnancy would shape her future.  She was certainly not the first woman in this situation or the last."

The progressive  Anglican church has long been known for its radical Christian messages of questioning tradition and acceptance of all people. What would Jesus do?

He'd probably go to St. Matts.

Happy New Year. I'll be back tomorrow with 2011's most effed ads.