Latinas, and darker-skinned women in general, are rarely allowed to be more. The darker our skin, the less we adhere to whiteness, and the more deviant we are assumed to be. We’re allowed to be sexual, fiery, devious, seductive, and physically mature. We can almost never be vulnerable, cute, insecure, delicate, soft, or simply human – especially in the ways white women like Overwatch’s Mercy or Apex Legends’ Wattson get to be. We are constantly forced into an intensely stereotypical and narrow view of us that only gets further perpetuated every day through the media and is extended into the policies and cultures that shape our lives.
I’m not monetizing GPORG so I’m not that concerned with the number of visits. On the other hand, trying to get a lot of visitors has turned into a game for me. And it’s getting hard to play without the right “scoreboard” (Google Analytics, Statcounter, etc).
But first! Let me tell you about my long-ass attempt to reinstall Google Analytics.
I’ve switched between Google Analytics and Statcounter. I like Statcounter’s simplicity, but Google Analytics has some features I like (bounce rate for instance), but is otherwise too OP (and confusing) for me. So I was using Statcounter for a while, and just recently, decided to give GA another try.
The problem is, when I uncommented the GA code, I found out the hard way that the tag would not track for some reason. Note that I didn’t change the property or anything. In fact, the tracking code under the admin tab is literally the same as before.
The solution I found while digging around the internet is to install Google Tag Assistant for Chrome to figure out what’s going on. I use Firefox and I have Chrome, but I use it as a “work browser”*. It’s signed into my GSuite account for work, and modded out with all my extensions that I need for my job. I even have have the “starting tabs” set as my work Gmail and a couple other essential Google Sheet files. In fact, I knew that once I open Chrome, it’ll probably notify me of a new email, because I installed an extension for Gmail sound notifications. So I decided to look around for more info.
*some people have work computers, I have a work browser.
After poking around the GA dashboard, I found the option to upgrade to Google Analytics 4! I wasn’t aware there was a version 4. So I guess I’m on version 3?
I upgraded. It had me create a new property, and connect the Universal Analytics property to the new v4 one. I did that and noticed it had the option to add the new code (with the new *ahem* measurement ID). But I already connected the GA4 property to the UA property, so I don’t need to do that…right?
(And here, I realized that the previous version of Google Analytics is NOT Google Analytics 3, like I thought based on the logic that the new one is Google Analytics 4. It’s called Universal Analytics.)
🤷♀️
Either way, you can tell if a JS file is being summoned on a page by going to the web inspector, then looking for the file in the table (you may have to refresh your browser window if there is no table). In my case, I was trying to find anything from the domain googletagmanager.com or heck, anything from any of Google’s sites. Buuuuuuuut….
Sooo….yeah
At this point, I decided I was desperate enough to try Google Tag Assistant, so I opened up Chrome (and very quickly closed all the work-related tabs–already got an email notification in the 0.00001s I had my Gmail tab open!), and installed Google Tag Assistant.
Soooo, the interesting thing is if I use the old UA code (pre-GA4), GTA complains about the site having multiple tags. If I use the new GA4 code, it notices that it’s a Google Analytics tag all right…but the ID is either missing or not valid???
🤯
And so, I thought maybe GA4 isn’t ready for primetime yet (I did get a notice at the bottom of the dashboard thanking me for being an early adopter…ummmm…). I tried deleting the GA4 tag BUT WAIT. I can’t because it’s linking the GA4 property to the UA one????
(So far, there doesn’t seem to be an option to delete the Google Analytics 4 property.)
Statcounter to the Rescue!
So maybe Google Analytics might not be for me after all. Statcounter DOES show bounce rate, but you have to dig around for it (in an obscure window). But installation is stupidly simple. 🤷♀️
Sooo…TL;DR?
If you read through this entire post, trying to figure out what my point is (and are undecided on which one to use).
Use Statcounter if…
…all you want to do is track how many visitors come to your site and other basic info (like geographic location, timestamp of visit, IP address…). It does let you label IP addresses and look up how people are navigating through your site btw.
Use Google Analytics if…
…you need more features like ummmmm…conversions, goals and such. (Or if you have a digital marketing team, cuz a lot of digital marketing teams are well versed in Google Analytics.)
Yes, I use an adblocker + VPN + Cloudflare’s DNS to minimize people snooping on me. But here I am tracking you guys???? Ummmmm?????
Visitor tracking is for my own curiosity. I don’t sell anyone’s info to anyone. You can read Statcounter’s privacy policy. If you’re still uncomfortable, I won’t guilt people to into unblocking Statcounter if they already have it blocked. Like I said, I don’t monetize GPORG, so there are no ads to block. 😀
Edit: 2020/11/21
I decided to give GA another try, and nothing. I commented out the tag, so only Statcounter was able to run. Later on, I ran GPORG through Google Page Speed Insights and got a pretty good score (upper 90s). BUT. Two things surprised me:
It complained about “unused JavaScript”. The “unused JavaScript” was Google Analytics.
Wait, Google Analytics is still running on GPORG???
I kinda went hm, and realized I commented out the wrong tracker tag (Statcounter). But hey! I checked the Google Analytics dashboard and found one pageview! So it looks like it’s working! Google Tag Assistant just needs to update itself for GA4 I guess???
And here’s the “unused JavaScript” GA code Page Speed Insights insisted I remove:
Sooo…yeah.
(Google Analytics gets loaded through the Google Tag Manager domain apparently. 🤷♀️)
Well…fine, Google. If you don’t want me using your Analytics tracker, I won’t! 🤨
In addition to the big house trope that seems to run rampant in my dreams, there is one house in particular that would appear in a lot of my dreams. It looked more like a Portal level designer came up with the architecture of the house. The house was mostly white and gray on the inside. The front door was centered right in the middle of the wall of the front room. Two (handrailess) staircases both started at the door and immediately split away from each other, each running alongside the walls, around the room and toward the back, which lead to more hallways. One of these back hallways lead to my room, and another staircase that led to the back door.
So while you don’t have to parkour or shoot portals to walk across the room, it looks like a Portal level designer was told to make the interior of a house and just let loose his inner, nerdish desires.
On With the Dream!
In this dream, we moved into this house as usual. And while wandering through the house, I was starting to become aware that I’ve been in this dream before. And got really excited and went looking for the back staircase, because that was always my favorite part about this house.
I didn’t find the staircase. What I found instead was a huge public bathroom. It looked like a school locker room, but not very well lit. And yeah, all the lockers were bathroom stalls.
Yeah, like this, but with bathroom stalls instead of lockers. | Photo by Liz Weddon on Unsplash
I was able to find the exit and found the “backroom” of a Disney Store, which was on the second level of a three level shopping mall (that btw, looked more like a cave than a shopping mall).
(And btw, this part with my house being attached to a Disney Store was another recurring dream arc. Just not from the same one as the one with the Portal house.)
I thought this was cool, but not as cool as the dreams where I end up at an abandoned version of Downtown Disney (more like Disneypolis, since it’s huge compared to Downtown Disney), and have to trek through Abandoned!Disneyland only to find myself at Abandoned!CSUCI. And decided to go back inside.
Except when I went back to the bathroom area, I couldn’t find the entrance to the house. I went through aisles and aisles of bathroom stalls only to find more aisles of bathroom stalls. I probably made about 20 turns through the area, but it was like a giant grid of aisles that kept endlessly generating more aisles as I ran through.
Eventually, I found an intersection with a pool table in the middle. A well-dressed gentleman approached me and threw some brochures on the pool table. He could help me find my way, he said, if I was willing to pay for some insurance. I thought about it. I didn’t want to have to pay to find my way back to my own house, but I did spend about what seemed like half an hour, traversing an abnormally large bathroom.
Then my alarm woke me up. The end.
(And here, I would’ve liked to have known: did I take up his offer?? Was he legit?? Etc. But work calls.)
