2024 was an excellent year for PopCult Reviews. It also had me thinking about the span of 2020 – 2025, where each year has brought in more & more views, changing the average range per month.
In 2024, my per-month average was over 15,000 views/per month. The peak was in January with 21,404 views and the lowest point was February with 10,974 views. Compare that to 2023, where the peak was December with 17,464 views, with the low point being February with 4,222 views.
My theory for the last few years has been that once you breach certain view numbers, you are semi-permanently in a new possible range of views. If I stopped posting on the blog altogether, I assume that number would go down over time, though my old posts still get lots of views.
It seems Kevin Can Go F*** Himself has a bit of a revival in interest this year? My review for the first season of Somebody Somewhere also got a lot of traffic. Despite that show not being my thing, I am sorry for the fans who watched HBO cancel it.
Below is a graph that charts views from 2020-2024. I see this as a particular era of the blog when it came to the attention of a lot more pairs of eyes. It’s also the first half of the decade, and it feels like a good point to reflect on a larger amount of time.
For 2024, I racked up 184,218 total views. That was 43% growth over 2023. If we look all the way back to 2020, that represents 168% growth.
In 2024, I published 388 posts that totaled over 469,000 words.
But now I think about 2025. I would be lying if I said I didn’t think PopCult was stuck in a routine. I like to change things up occasionally and have been thinking about what to do in the new year.
One idea I have had is expanding PopCult into Substack, but I didn’t just want to crosspost the website to Substack. I have thought about doing an op-ed type of writing, where instead of focusing on a singular work (film, book, TV show), I write about a person, genre, or general concept/trope.
A couple examples might be an article looking at what Paul Schrader’s films tell us about hyper-individuality in America or thoughts on why a character like Captain Marvel/Shazam has such difficulty being adapted into contemporary comics. I don’t expect to launch anything on Substack in January, but I would like to write two or three of these before I start and release them weekly.
You may have noticed I am participating in the 31 Days/31 Characters challenge for January, where people create a tabletop game character each day of the month. So far, I have a Halfling Monk for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition and an elementary teacher turned woman on a mission for the cinematic action game Outgunned. I may crosspost these to Substack, too, or similar types of month-long challenges.
I have decided to make a concerted effort once a week to look at other blogs/sites on WordPress and see what others are doing, hoping this will inspire new ideas.
I’m also trying to think about how to freshen up the podcast. We have a pretty consistent routine of reviewing two films in an episode, and I don’t want to make the show much longer than it already is. I am wondering about rotating into new segments. One example of how I will change things up soon is when Nosferatu finally gets its digital release, we’re going to watch the 1922 original, Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake, and the newest film to talk about them as a look at changes in cinema over the last century.
2025 is going to be an interesting year in which I seek transformation. I’ll still have film series and reviews of all sorts of other media. You can check out the posting schedule for January to see that nothing has radically changed.
Here’s to hoping it’s a good new year for us all.
PopCult Reviews 