Hey Look At Us
January 27, 2022 6:56 PM Subscribe
Is a website that tells you how many people are currently viewing it.
That is all.
That is all.
Remember when lots of websites had a visits ticker?
Christ I’m old.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:01 PM on January 27, 2022 [27 favorites]
Christ I’m old.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:01 PM on January 27, 2022 [27 favorites]
It’s not cumulative though, it’s just how many people are looking at it at the same time as you. Creepy, yet useless, yet fun.
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:06 PM on January 27, 2022
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:06 PM on January 27, 2022
You can do anything at heylookat.us. The only limit is yourself. Welcome.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:07 PM on January 27, 2022 [21 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 7:07 PM on January 27, 2022 [21 favorites]
Distilled Tiktok.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:09 PM on January 27, 2022
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:09 PM on January 27, 2022
because everyone else is
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:14 PM on January 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:14 PM on January 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
17
posted by AlSweigart at 7:17 PM on January 27, 2022
posted by AlSweigart at 7:17 PM on January 27, 2022
22. We’re slashdotting it!
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:18 PM on January 27, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:18 PM on January 27, 2022 [9 favorites]
I'm a little disappointed that the "share on twitter" function uses numerals and not 18 green square emojis
posted by ejs at 7:26 PM on January 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by ejs at 7:26 PM on January 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
9️⃣
posted by clavdivs at 7:33 PM on January 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by clavdivs at 7:33 PM on January 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
I feel like there's a horror story in this that starts with people staring at the screen and seeing a big giant "0".
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:48 PM on January 27, 2022 [48 favorites]
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:48 PM on January 27, 2022 [48 favorites]
Why do I keep refreshing this. Why.
You don't have to. It refreshes itself.
posted by dobbs at 8:02 PM on January 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
You don't have to. It refreshes itself.
posted by dobbs at 8:02 PM on January 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
I shit you not... I clicked on it and got 13... yay pony!
posted by JoeXIII007 at 8:13 PM on January 27, 2022
posted by JoeXIII007 at 8:13 PM on January 27, 2022
Yo!
posted by Umami Dearest at 8:14 PM on January 27, 2022
posted by Umami Dearest at 8:14 PM on January 27, 2022
Oh no, now I'm stuck in a crouton petting bind where I don't want to abandon the other 12 people hanging out over there. :(
posted by merriment at 8:14 PM on January 27, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by merriment at 8:14 PM on January 27, 2022 [6 favorites]
It decreased by one while I was there and I'm trying not to take it personally.
posted by traveler_ at 8:45 PM on January 27, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by traveler_ at 8:45 PM on January 27, 2022 [11 favorites]
11
posted by Going To Maine at 9:11 PM on January 27, 2022
posted by Going To Maine at 9:11 PM on January 27, 2022
a website that tells you how many people are currently viewing it.
That is all.
Is this post-hipsterism? I heard that term the other day. I'm trying to figure out what it means.
posted by philip-random at 10:17 PM on January 27, 2022
That is all.
Is this post-hipsterism? I heard that term the other day. I'm trying to figure out what it means.
posted by philip-random at 10:17 PM on January 27, 2022
So here's something that might pickle your cucumber. This kind of thing is actually pretty hard to do with any sort of accuracy. When someone arrives at a website, they announce their arrival with fanfare and trumpets, because they ask the server for a whole bunch of things all quickly in a row. After that, though? It's not like a phone call where the line stays open waiting for sound to transmit over a dedicated channel. If the person viewing the site does something to change the state of the page (clicks a link, triggers some kind of Javascript event, etc.) then that request will confirm that yep, this person is still Doing Something, and should count toward our Total User Count. Otherwise, though, it's just radio silence. You can't broadcast something to the user asking what they're up to, because that's not how the web works (er, mostly). And there's no event from the user marking the end of the visit, per se. Some browsers send a "the user just closed this tab, bye!" valedictory, but not all, and relying on them is a bad idea. So mostly you're left to infer that any session that you haven't heard from in a while is a window that's been closed... but how long do you wait before you declare an idle session to be actually gone? Does the interval change depend on what the user does on the site? And what do you do if the supposedly-dead session asks for a new piece of content? What if we got proactive and wired up some kind of Javascript game of Marco Polo for the browser to play?
Anyway, session management is its own private hell, so kudos to this person for making a fun toy out of it.
posted by Mayor West at 10:59 PM on January 27, 2022 [13 favorites]
Anyway, session management is its own private hell, so kudos to this person for making a fun toy out of it.
posted by Mayor West at 10:59 PM on January 27, 2022 [13 favorites]
1
posted by lazaruslong at 12:15 AM on January 28, 2022
posted by lazaruslong at 12:15 AM on January 28, 2022
I too got 1 with my first try.
It might be the loneliest number, but it made me smile.
posted by Faintdreams at 12:58 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
It might be the loneliest number, but it made me smile.
posted by Faintdreams at 12:58 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Dangit, I am stuck at 2! (I am also stuck at 2, hardeehar mathdadjoke.)
posted by Pandora Kouti at 1:33 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Pandora Kouti at 1:33 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
What if we got proactive and wired up some kind of Javascript game of Marco Polo for the browser to play?
A quick browse of the javascript on the page looks like that it's exactly what it's doing (I am a little rusty); visiting the page sends a unique ID every 5 seconds to a server page, and updates the visible count with the answer it gets back; the server just has to count up the unique IDs that are polling it currently. Close the page, or just move to another tab, and the server knows within 5 seconds that you're gone.
As you say, doing this any other way is just not reliable; the web was designed so that each request for a webpage would be a one-and-done affair, and maintaining state (for e.g. a shopping cart) is a kludgy pain in the arse. I implemented a websockets custom setup once to do back-n-forth messages between browser and server, and that was a whole other barrel of monkeys.
Also: 4.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 1:50 AM on January 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
A quick browse of the javascript on the page looks like that it's exactly what it's doing (I am a little rusty); visiting the page sends a unique ID every 5 seconds to a server page, and updates the visible count with the answer it gets back; the server just has to count up the unique IDs that are polling it currently. Close the page, or just move to another tab, and the server knows within 5 seconds that you're gone.
As you say, doing this any other way is just not reliable; the web was designed so that each request for a webpage would be a one-and-done affair, and maintaining state (for e.g. a shopping cart) is a kludgy pain in the arse. I implemented a websockets custom setup once to do back-n-forth messages between browser and server, and that was a whole other barrel of monkeys.
Also: 4.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 1:50 AM on January 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
Does a website really exist if nobody views it ?
Also: 5
posted by Pendragon at 2:31 AM on January 28, 2022
Also: 5
posted by Pendragon at 2:31 AM on January 28, 2022
2
posted by milnews.ca at 3:43 AM on January 28, 2022
posted by milnews.ca at 3:43 AM on January 28, 2022
ejs: "I'm a little disappointed that the "share on twitter" function uses numerals and not 18 green square emojis"
from Popbitch this week:
Q/ What's the hardest part of playing Wordle?
A/ Keeping it to yourself, apparently...
posted by chavenet at 3:55 AM on January 28, 2022 [7 favorites]
from Popbitch this week:
Q/ What's the hardest part of playing Wordle?
A/ Keeping it to yourself, apparently...
posted by chavenet at 3:55 AM on January 28, 2022 [7 favorites]
having spent the last 20 years on metafilter in USA timezones until two months ago, and now living in CET time zone, i feel like this all the time on metafilter now. i'm here while all of you sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep
posted by lazaruslong at 4:18 AM on January 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by lazaruslong at 4:18 AM on January 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
2
Such intimacy, felt through pixel count and monitor calibration; a throbbing vein of digital connection between us, you, a stranger with no face. We are one, while still being separated by unknown, unknowable distance... both one and zero at once, the living binary paradox of passion. I reach out, feeling nothing and everything, trembling with
3
Our unicorn is here!
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 4:54 AM on January 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
Such intimacy, felt through pixel count and monitor calibration; a throbbing vein of digital connection between us, you, a stranger with no face. We are one, while still being separated by unknown, unknowable distance... both one and zero at once, the living binary paradox of passion. I reach out, feeling nothing and everything, trembling with
3
Our unicorn is here!
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 4:54 AM on January 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
Q/ What's the hardest part of playing Wordle?
A/ Keeping it to yourself, apparently...
Finding the mute word function in Twitter.
posted by explosion at 5:21 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
A/ Keeping it to yourself, apparently...
Finding the mute word function in Twitter.
posted by explosion at 5:21 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Metafilter: A throbbing vein of digital connection between us
posted by Kabanos at 6:21 AM on January 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Kabanos at 6:21 AM on January 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
How does it work?
Visitors are identified by a server-generated UUID stored in browser local storage. The browser polls the server, continuing to notify the server that the visitor is still here. Each poll request refreshes the TTL on a redis key named for the visitor's UUID. The server reports back how many visitors' redis keys currently exist. The redis keys expire within seconds, so this count gives us a fairly accurate estimate of the current number of visitors.posted by gwint at 6:33 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Do you yearn to see a "1", or to see the largest number possible? Is there any measure of agreement on this, or are we two distinct groups?
posted by Paul Slade at 8:23 AM on January 28, 2022
posted by Paul Slade at 8:23 AM on January 28, 2022
I really want to see 0.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:31 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:31 AM on January 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
Me too. So I'm trying to make that more likely by popping open Firefox's web developer tools and emptying the value associated with the hey_look_at_us_id key in local storage.
There's code in the polling script that attaches that ID to the polling URL only if it evaluates as truthy. With any luck, making it falsy will let my browser poll everybody else's count without making a contribution of its own.
Piracy. It's a lifestyle and a calling.
posted by flabdablet at 11:00 PM on January 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
There's code in the polling script that attaches that ID to the polling URL only if it evaluates as truthy. With any luck, making it falsy will let my browser poll everybody else's count without making a contribution of its own.
Piracy. It's a lifestyle and a calling.
posted by flabdablet at 11:00 PM on January 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
session management is its own private hell
Personal best before getting 403'd off the site: 522
Could probably better that by horribly abusing Tor, but everybody has a line and that's the other side of mine.
posted by flabdablet at 12:59 AM on January 29, 2022
Personal best before getting 403'd off the site: 522
Could probably better that by horribly abusing Tor, but everybody has a line and that's the other side of mine.
posted by flabdablet at 12:59 AM on January 29, 2022
I just used lynx...
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:35 PM on January 29, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:35 PM on January 29, 2022 [1 favorite]
I got "0" and am now wondering just what that means, existentially.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:35 AM on January 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:35 AM on January 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
And so it begins...
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:46 AM on January 31, 2022
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:46 AM on January 31, 2022
I got '0' as well. Should I be worried? Is there something people aren't telling me?
posted by dg at 6:12 PM on January 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by dg at 6:12 PM on January 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
I got '0' as well. Should I be worried? Is there something people aren't telling me?
favorited 1 time, recently by The corpse in the library
Oh, how very reassuring!
posted by dg at 4:08 PM on February 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
favorited 1 time, recently by The corpse in the library
Oh, how very reassuring!
posted by dg at 4:08 PM on February 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
posted by Going To Maine at 5:01 PM on February 1, 2022
Are you – Nobody – too?
posted by Going To Maine at 5:01 PM on February 1, 2022
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posted by AlSweigart at 6:58 PM on January 27, 2022