Figures just in have shown that interest in a satirical news website is waning at an alarming rate.
TheSpoof.com, a site which allows anyone and everyone the freedom to submit half-baked and ill-thought-out nonsense without even the most basic standards with regard to quality, has, since 2001, been one of the leaders in satire and parody, but - if reader statistics are anything to go by - this may no longer be the case.
Whereas, previously, an average of 50,000 items each and every day might have been inadvertently accessed by internet users looking for 'something else', but hoodwinked into clicking upon an 'interesting' headline, that number has seen a sharp fall of late, with the average now being around only 10,000 per day.
One writer at the site said:
"There used to be a lot more 'traffic' than there is. I use the word 'traffic' in the sense of 'people visiting the site to read stories', not as in 'cars, buses, lorries and so on'. I just thought I'd point that out, to avoid any confusion."
Another said:
"Yes, it's disappointing. I used to get many more views than I do at the moment, but that's the way it goes, isn't it? That's the way the cookie crumbles. That's the cards you get dealt. That's life."
A third said:
"We do our best. We give it our all, churning out endless amounts of barely-readable gubbins on a daily basis, but people are voting with their feet - or rather their hands - and viewing other sites. In fact, if you want to be pedantic, they're voting with their fingertips, although this is being a trifle exacting."
And, in the times of the Coronavirus, Covid-19, many can't understand, with all the extra spare time everyone has to waste whilst waiting for lockdowns to be lifted, why there isn't more traffic instead of less. It's a mystery.
Site owner, Mark Lowton, was lost for an explanation. He said:
"I'm lost for an explanation. I've even introduced a brilliant new feature, which magically turns shit stories into great ones, but I feel like we're flogging a dead horse at the moment."
Police are not investigating.
