Wolf Gnards

The other day a friend told me, “I like to read Wolf Gnards on the toilet,” which I took as a tremendous compliment. Who wouldn’t? In fact, I won’t rest until my face is in bathroom stalls everywhere. There’s nothing wrong with being bathroom reading. It’s the best kind of reading of all really: you’re both at your most vulnerable and at your highest levels of concentration. To have that level of intimacy with a reader is an honor.

But the whole concept of reading my blog in the bathroom got me thinking: Are there more people out there reading websites in the john? With the decline of print magazines, newspapers, and literature, and the rise of readily available internet access and inexpensive mobile devices people can now bring their iPads and smart phones into restrooms with them. Has People Magazine been replaced by People.com? Is this the natural progression of technology and biology? If my friend’s colon is any kind of gauge for future trends then yes it is.

The best part of this new generation of toilet reading is that not only are we using high tech reading materials to pass the time, but we can actually track that high tech reading material that we use to pass the time. Or in other words, I know when you’re pooping. Google Analytics makes it possible to track so much about my readership—how many viewers, what part of the world they’re coming from—I can even track when users are bringing Wolf Gnards into the bathroom.

Google, of course, could make it easier by creating a poop button in Analytics, but until that day we’re forced to figure it out for ourselves. It’s not too hard, though (depending on your diet… wokka, wokka). All you need to know is what time people move their bowels. Which is just a Google search away. The average person has their first bowel movement 3 to 4 hours after they wake up, and if the average person wakes up between 6:00 AM and 7:00 AM, this means the average bowel is passed between 9:00 and 11:00 AM. I can filter my visitors in Analytics by mobile devices and I can go into advance segments to create a filter for just the time between 9 and 11. Which means in the month of January, 227 people brought Wolf Gnards into the bathroom with them.

However, there are two major flaws with this breakdown. One being that not everyone that came to my site between the hours of 9 and 11 went to the bathroom, this time just represents the highest probability of poopage (or HPP). So, only a fraction of that 227 were actually going to the bathroom at the time. The other major problem being that other people could have gone to the bathroom outside the hours of HPP. People aren’t statistical automatons and are fully capable of going to the bathroom at random and varied hours of the day. More people use the bathroom than what the HPP can determine. Although, these flaws are saying there should be more bathroom activity on one side, and the other saying there should be less, so they could potentially cancel each other out. While not an exact figure I do think 227 is a fair estimate.

A third flaw is that I assume all Wolf Gnards bathroom readers use a mobile device. Grandma could very easily drag her Commodore 64 into the bathroom with her, or Junior could use a bedpan while playing WoW. I’m willing to concede that these people exist, if we’re willing to just promptly forget about them. Maniacs like them don’t deserve to be included in studies, they’re almost as bad as someone who would put time and effort into figuring out when people go to the bathroom… oh.

So, 227 is my poop ranking, what’s yours?

And if you happen to be on the toilet as you read this, please feel to drop us a line, but, maybe, you should wash your hands first.