Top Ten Most Popular Posts in 2012 That Were Actually Published in 2011, 2010 or 2009
1. Top Ten Best Lesbian Movies: 10 Queer Movies That Don’t Suck, by Riese, Intern Lily, Intern X, Intern Katrina, Intern Emily, Intern Elizabeth & Intern Hot Laura. August 19, 2009.
This article was conceived in the summer of 2009 in Riverside Park, when we didn’t have a budget and therefore were treating the interns to a splendid mid-day meal of french fries, gathered in several large paper sacks from McDonalds. I wrote down who would take which movie with greasy fingers. We did a follow-up, also, Ten More Queer Girl Movies That Don’t Suck.
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2. How to Have Lesbian Sex for the First Time: NSFW Sunday Special. November 13, 2011
Google “lesbian sex.” I dare you.
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3. Ten Hot Lesbian Movie Sex Scenes for NSFW Sexy Sunday, by Riese. February 21, 2010
This is back when I was really committed to writing thematic NSFW Sundays (I rarely write NSFW Sundays anymore, let alone thematic ones.) This particular post was a big deal because I had to confess my relationship with the Encyclopedia of Lesbian Movie Scenes.
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4. How to Have Lesbian Sex Tips From NSFW Sunday. June 19, 2011.
These were your tips and they were all awesome except one of them which was a bad idea.
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5. Top 10 Lesbian Fashion & Style Icons, by Alex & Riese. August 14, 2009.
When Alex and I used to live in the same city and spend most days together we would collaborate on stuff like this. It was really fun to put together and actually got republished in Curve Magazine.
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6. Jillian Michaels: First Lady to Ever Come Out (Bisexual) In “Ladies Home Journal”, by Riese. January 5th, 2010
Like I said, we’ve somehow cornered this piece of the search engine market. It remains a mystery to me. This is also the one and only time I ever purchased a copy of Ladies Home Journal.
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7. NSFW Saturday: It’s Lindsay Lohan in Playboy, Naked!, by Jess R. December 10, 2011
Jess R was always on top of this kind of shit. Come back to us, Jess R!
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8. Why Taylor Swift Offends Little Monsters, Feminists & Weirdos, by Riese. February 6, 2010.
Ughhhhh
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9. The L Word Top Ten (okay, 15) Sex Scenes Back Of All Time, by Riese. March 11, 2009.
We wrote a few articles to already have up when we launched that I naively expected would lead to immediate success via SEO mastery (it’s not that easy): two top tens about lesbian books and this meticulously constructed compendium of The L Word‘s best sex scenes.
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10. Girl-on-Gallery: Hot Girls Wearing Short Shorts, April 29, 2009.
I made this gallery to improve our page views. It worked!
2012’s Most Commented-Upon Posts
1. Introducing Camp Autostraddle, by Riese. February 14, 2012
2. OPEN THREAD: Let’s Talk About How Awesome A-Camp Was, by Riese. April 30, 2012
3. International Autostraddle Meet-Up Weeks: You’ve Earned It, by Vanessa. October 4, 2012
4. OPEN THREAD: Let’s Talk About How Really Really Awesome A-Camp Was, by Riese. September 17, 2012
5. OPEN THREAD: 2012 Election Day Live-Blog, With Feelings, by Ali. November 6, 2012
6. Introducing Camp Autostraddle 2012: Registration is Wide Open, by Riese. May 21, 2012
7. You Should Come: July 15th Is International Autostraddle Summer Brunch Day, by Laneia. July 2, 2012
8. We Need Help: Our Big Fundraiser To Build A Better Autostraddle, by Riese & Alex. July 25, 2012
9. OPEN THREAD: Music you’re Embarrassed to Love, by Crystal. September 26, 2012
10. Who The Hell Are You? What The Autostraddle Reader Survey Told Us About You, by Riese. January 10, 2012
2012’s Most-Commented-On Posts, Excluding Events & Open Threads
1. How To Leave Your Husband (Because You’re A Lesbian), by Laneia. March 29, 2012.
It’s really good, is what it is.
2. The Dirty Truth About Bisexuals, A Case Study, by Riese & Rachel. April 1, 2012.
Apparently not everybody realized that this was an April Fool’s Day Joke.
3. Gay Families Attend White House Easter Egg Roll Hoping For Eggs, Workplace Protection Executive Order, by Rachel. April 9, 2012.
In which a bunch of haters came to Autostraddle to tell us about hell and our sins, etc., and we made fun of them.
4. Public Sex Is My Radical Sex, by Isabelle Nastasia. March 11, 2012.
This was a bit of a disaster.
5. Krisily Kennedy Likes Girls: The Autostraddle Interview, by Jess R. January 5, 2012.
Biphobia is the number one cause of elongated comment threads. True story. I wish the comment ratings hadn’t gotten wiped out during some wordpress avalanche or another because I feel they really enhanced the atmosphere on this post.
6. The 21 Most Lesbianish Cities in the US: The Autostraddle Guide, by Riese. January 24, 2012.
Obviously everybody has a feeling about this.
7. A-Camp Recap #1: Movin’ On Up (The Mountain), by The Team. May 10, 2012
This was a gripping account of how we attempted to transport 200 queers from an airport to a mountain and failed miserably on at least 56 fronts. Lots to discuss.
8. 14 Girls We Wanted To Be Back Then: Kickass Heroines from YA & Children’s Books of Yesteryear, by Riese & Laneia. September 24, 2012.
This was actually conceived of and published in the same day during a we-have-no-content panic. Ultimately, nothing gets us talking like talking about the books we loved as children & young adults.
9. Autostraddle Hot 100 2012: The Hottest Queerest Women In All The Land. May 25, 2012
Oh I don’t even know, I think I stopped following this thread pretty early on.
10. Femmes: Beyond Lipstick (and Heels & Dresses), by Kristen. August 16, 2012.
Sometimes a post gets a shit-ton of comments not because it’s a contentious list or because of a flame war but because that’s just how much you love it and it spoke to you. Those are beautiful times, and I’m glad to have two of those posts anchoring this list on either end.
NEXT: Fun with search!
Pages: 1 2 3See entire article on one page
The ‘Epic Gallery: 150 years of Lesbians…’ post is truly brilliant and certainly one of my favourite pieces that I read (from any publication – online or offline) at any point during 2012.
On a separate note; as a massive SEO nerd this post makes me so happy! I would be particularly interested to see what people search for within Autostraddle internally – ie. what the regular readers and members search for within the site, rather than the general interweb arriving here trying to find out who’s gay.
Also an SEO nerd, also totally into this post.
Mmm analytics porn.
SEO nerds unite! Lemme at that link juice!
I wonder how high the bounce rate is for most of those search queries? Is what I was thinking reading that, love me some analytics stats!
That is amazing re: Lizz’s Australian newsprint fame. I did not know this kind of plagiarism was a thing and will be paying much closer attention to my local rags from now on.
Everyone I have a conversation with about T Swift I send to that article Riese wrote about how horrible she is in every way, so I am très happy to see it is still heavily trafficked.
I feel like I must have been MIA for most of 2012, as I can’t remember many of these posts that are featured in all these top lists. Clearly I have some catching up to do.
Also, I’m with JC on telling everyone ever to read the Taylor Swift article. Also the comments. I always tell them the comments add to the brilliance of the commentary Riese brings.
‘150 years of lesbians …’ was absolutely wonderful. Definitely down as one of my favourite ever Autostraddle posts. Heartwarming kinda stuff. Also, I know that one of my ex-lecturers, whom I was totally smitten with, would love it. She’s gay. She’s a history lecturer. She likes pictures. What is there not to love?
I really appreciated ‘Texting your ex-girlfriend’ too – all for comedic value. Enjoyed recommending it to a friend who really needed the advice as well.
a straight, male friend of mine posted that taylor swift article on facebook recently, because he thought it was awesome probs. I was like “WHEEEEE!”
Seriously, I love that article – some of the comments are wacky, but the article perfectly explains my discomfort with Taylor Swift, her songs and all that she represents.
Riese, I reread that T Swift article, and I still love you for it.
I’m still really sad at where the comments went on “Public Sex is My Radical Sex;” I really liked that article and people were very harsh.
Just re-read it and the comments. The article was definitely interesting – I still have mixed feelings about it. But, the opportunity to discuss it in a meaningful way quickly fell apart. It was unfortunate that people weren’t able to agree or disagree with differing parts of the article without someone with an opposing view calling them either insensitive or too sensitive.
The events around that article is an outlier – AS comments/commenters are generally awesome.
Yeah, I find that 9 times out of 10 when the comments go to hell, it’s usually because of jerks from another site who flood the article, not because of our regular commenters. Our regular commenters are awesome!
One thing that made me happy about my ponies post is it’s a rare case where we got flooded with outside commenters (because it got linked on several MLP fansites, including the most popular one, Equestria Daily) but the commenting quality was still awesome. Probably because most of them were bronies who were like “Hey, someone said something nice about us for once and actually did their research instead of resorting to stereotypes!”
Er, I shouldn’t have said “rare” – obviously, most outside commenters are great and add to the site. But it seems like when we get a huge invasion like that, it’s usually for controversy’s sake? Maybe that’s just me.
Evan Rachel Wood Bisexual 4eva.
[person]+[sexual orientation]
…Anyone else unable to see Evan Rachel Wood Bisexual’s orientation?
I must have linked the Taylor Swift rant a hundred times on Twitter this year.
It’s just a really good post, okay
oh man i actually just love going back to comment sections full of trolls and reading like 200 comments worth of hilarious editor-supplied additions to hateful comments. you’re all super amazing. keep up the dancing hotdogs.
and i think i just read the entire comment section on the taylor swift article. i get the impression that the editors of this lovely website have basically just given up on going anywhere near that. i feel like if autostraddle was a family christmas gathering where everyone is wearing cute sweaters and having intellectual discussions over the tofurkey, then that comment section is the drunk uncle that sits in the corner, yells out obnoxious shit, and hits on your girlfriend, and you’ve just all decided that if you ignore him, maybe he’ll shut up eventually.
“150 years of lesbians …’ was fantastic
Also, Evan Rachel Wood Bisexual
So I was reading the comments on one of these articles, and then the Infamous Fingernails Article was linked in a comment, and of course every time that link comes up I have to re-read it… is that just me?
Also, *shudder*
What is the link?
trust me you don’t want it
but anyway http://www.autostraddle.com/effing-dykes-what-lies-beneath-her-nails-68129/
Oh god you were right. That made me want to cry.
That easter egg roll is actually one of my favorite posts! Once in a while I’ll get really bored and look it up; it’s probably the funniest way to kill half an hour.
I know absolutely nothing about My Little Pony but I just read that article. And all of the comments. And now I’ve found it on Netflix. Y’all must have some kind of voodoo at work around here.
Nice retrospective. Witnessing (and occasionally commenting on) your journey for the past few years has been aces. And now, I will revisit some of the posts mentioned, starting with Laneia’s most-commented-on post; I recall thinking it was moving and charming, and it mentioned something about boats (?) that made me laugh.
[I wrote this while listening to Everypony’s gay for Braeburn, brought to me by Equestria Daily, via this, because why not. Boats.]
Yeah, this is immature and irrelevant as Taylor Swift herself but it gave me lols: “Never was this bunnyrabBITCHild persona more exploited than it was after the VMAs.” Sometimes even dyslexia can be fun.
I hope this site sticks around. One of a kind and my equivalent to a morning paper.
Wait a sec, did AS not invent, or at least popularise, the term Alternative Lifestyle Haircut?
So this has propogated throughout the internet and now people use it to return to the very cradle of ALH?
I feel like somehow this is very meta and cyclical and the world will soon be sucked into a vortex of asymmetrical queer coiffures.
it was first said during a gay pimp podcast episode starring me and carly – johnny was joking about how he could tell from our alternative lifestyle haircuts that we were lesbians (i had a different haircut then, obvs!) – and then we popularized it and now everybody uses it everywhere b/c we rule
I just really want “fisting” to be on this list next year.
Still makes me wince. But the folks at our hometown hospital say “Hi”!
But! Half the replies on http://www.autostraddle.com/there-must-be-at-least-five-ways-to-text-your-ex-girlfriend-138626/ are mental spam from bizarre randoms singing the praises of a myriad of witch-doctors who will get your ex back for you.
Do the spam comments count? Having said that, it was the most marvellous article, one that I should have re-read yesterday. Perhaps then I would not be suffering from this massive bout of message-outbox alco-shame. Le sigh.
well, it wasn’t listed on the “most commented” posts lists, just the most viewed.
And that’s why I should pay more attention to what I read. Cheers Riese.
Aw, the stuff about my writing in the summary of the ponies post was so nice! Thanks guys!
I was reliving the great comment wars of 2012 and I noticed that you referred to a certain troll named Trixie as “the great and powerful Trixie” and I just wanted to come back to the present and let you know that you won my heart/pants and all the things.
Wait, I don’t remember this, which comment war was this?
(But thanks! I’m glad people appreciate/understand my random MLP references!)
The Dirty Truth About Bisexuals
And I was slightly wrong, the troll’s username was Tricksie, so I spelled it wrong. Speaking of Trixie, do you do fanfic? And have you read Kindness’s Reward?
I read MLP fanfiction (since that’s the bulk of the focus of my article above) although I’m a bit behind right now. But I’ve never gotten that into writing it, at least not with ponies.
When I saw “evan rachel wood bisexual” I seriously almost lol’ed, but it’s 2 a.m. and I’m trying not to wake people up.
Evan Rachel Wood Bisexual 5ever
I remember those days fondly
Just reread the dirty truth about bisexuals.
Seriously. Genius.
I enjoyed this post so much!
Thanks for all of this great content :)
The femme article was great. And I just read Rose’s pony article. So strange, but SO WELL DONE. Another site with lower standards would have massacred topics like this.
I also love that AS can admit when things are ‘a disaster’ or a fucking shitstorm.
If the most googled stats were dependant on me Peanut butter cookies would be no.1. Cos i cannot tell you how often i’ve needed that recipe in an emergency.
I love everything Riese writes.
I think it’s weird that I really, really like all the lists and stats about Autostraddle. So this compilation is fantastic.