The Most Popular mitchmen Posts of All Time (2017)

Priapus of Milet - Shooting The Past

Regular readers might be shocked that there's not a Mike Carcel image headlining this article,
surely he's not been overtaken in the total hits count since last year?
Well, no he hasn't, but read on and I will explain. (Image Courtesy of Telemachus)

According to my Blogger 'hit stats', the mitchmen articles registering the most hits during 2017 were

Table 1 – mitchmen Articles with Most Hits in 2017

Position (& last year)	Article	Published	Hits in 2017	'All Time Hits' position
1 (2 )	Priapus of Milet - 1	2012	5673	2
2 (1)	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Cavelo	2008	4844	6
3 (3)	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Mike Carcel	2010	3681	1
4 (9)	A Christmas Criminal (ep 1-5)	2015	2402	26
5 (4)	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Malex	2010	2354	3
6 (5)	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Jotto	2009	2158	4
7 (11)	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Platter	2012	1778	10
8 (-)	A-Z of Fetish Artists – The Hun	2009	1597	20
9 (-)	The Milking Factory	2017	1411	102
10 (=6 )	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Martin of Holland	2010	1347	7
11 (=6 )	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Franco	2009	1267	5
12 ( - )	Bound & Gagged Magazine - 4	2014	1258	35
13 (15)	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Heredia	2009	1204	9
14 ( - )	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Kalabro	2009	1140	21
15 ( - )	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Roscoe	2012	1126	23
16 ( - )	Retrorope	2014	1064	44
17 (17)	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Marc	2010	1044	17
18 ( - )	Vintage Bondage Blog	2012	1023	15
19 (10)	Vintage Spanking Art	2014	1014	55
20 (13)	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Michael Mitchell	2010	1009	16

I have changed my approach to this annual review this year, counting only hits registered during the current year, rather than their cumulative totals since publication. This gives a more current view of what's popular and is more interesting, I think. The old-style table appears further down this article. To see earlier years click on the 'MPP' label at the foot of this post. The titles in all the tables link to the original posts. Please tell me if you have difficulty with any links

The top article this year is Priapus of Milet-1 and that is the reason why a recent example of his art is displayed above. He's not really a fetish artist in the conventional sense but he often explores sinister physical and psychological subjects in an understated way which is quite classy. My choice of image is one of those sort of fetishy, control situations from his recent story 'Shooting The Past'. A hunky, factory worker is persuaded to pose in 1930's 'heroic worker' style and then to strip for the camera, producing this slightly comical, deliciously submissive relationship. This situation is more erotic for me than the view through the lens would be.

My 2012 articles on Priapus were based on his early stand-alone images but he seems to produce stories now, which are published regularly at Telemachus12 (a site I highly recommend for its stable of top class artists, of which two more, Jotto and Franco also feature in my top 5). The link from that site to mine drives some of the 'hit' figures here and I suspect the same is true of the other top scorers, but I have yet to identify all the sites concerned.

Priapus displaced Cavelo from the top spot (in this list) in 2017 but both artists still registered more hits than last year (as did most of the top ten in a year in which overall site views increased by 14%).
Mike Carcel stayed in a respectable 3rd place.

As in previous years the list is dominated by my A-Z of Fetish artists and other artist appreciations, so, as you might imagine, I am pleased to see my own 'Christmas Criminal' story at No 4. I must admit I did plug it a lot on my 'front page' but the success of this experiment - use of colour and publication via the blog - is encouraging me to try more .

Two new artists enter the top 10 this year, Sean Platter and The Hun. As I have mentioned in past years, 'demonic' is a frequent search term at mitchmen, Platter's imaginings are clearly very popular. The Hun takes his rightful place alongside the other fetish masters following my renovation of his A-Z article. I should point out that I don't have comprehensive figures for 2016 so some of the (-) rankings here may simply reflect that vacuum, rather than a sudden rise in popularity.

The balance of the top 20 is made up with some interesting 'non-Artist' entries. My new measure of popularity tends to exclude the latest year's articles because they don't get a full year of readability, but 'Milking Factory' gets in at 9. 'Woodenart' last year also got into the chart in his first year but his disappearance now and the comparison with the figures at the top of the table shows the extent of the challenge in sustaining that first flush of popularity!

This blog has a strong retrospective flavour which is very well represented in my top 20 but I'm particularly glad to see the article on the seminal and ground-breaking 'Bound & Gagged' magazine getting the attention it deserves together with several other articles celebrating the glories of what you might call 'the liberation years' from the 60's to the 90's. My first sight of a 'Bound and Gagged' magazine gave me a thrill of excitement comparable with my first encounter with Tom of Finland's work and
the experience I describe in 'My Initiation'. All never to be forgotten.

'Retrorope' is a welcome counterbalance to these dusty memories, despite his name he's a worthy and classy representative of the modern way, refreshingly simple and youthful. You might visit his Retrorope blog if you haven't been there recently, there's an interesting set of pics called 'Camp Retrorope' (post dated 9^th Aug 2017).

There's no representative from 2011, 2013 or 2016 in this table. The nearest contenders were

2011 A Tribute to Bound Gods @27

2013 Hethong Male Spanking @21

2016   Greasetank - Part 1   @34

My 'Index of Artists' Page scored 8664 hits in 2017, which exceeded all these articles, I'm glad visitors find it useful and hope it will lead newcomers to fantastic art they never saw before.

Total blog visits this year were 393K, up 14% from 2016 (343K).

Total mitchmen blog visits for all years to date are 2.32 million (*see footnote below)

Table 2 below shows the results using the method I have used in the past 

Table 2 – Articles With Most Hits Since Publication

Posn (last yr)	Title of Post (& link)	Year of Publicn	Total Hits
1 (1)	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Mike Carcel	2010	21126
2 (2)	Priapus of Milet - 1	2012	18065
3 (3)	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Malex	2010	12568
4 (5)	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Jotto	2009	10950
5 (4)	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Franco	2009	10680
6 (8)	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Cavelo	2008	10256
7 (6)	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Martin of Holland	2010	7950
8 (7)	My Initiation	2012	6390
9 (9)	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Heredia	2009	6082
10 (14)	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Platter	2012	6006
11 (10)	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Leo	2010	5608
12 (12)	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Mahoney	2010	5403
13 (13)	A Tribute to Bound Gods	2011	5304
14 (11)	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Klaus von Brandenburg	2009	5265
15 (15)	Vintage Bondage Blog	2012	5148
16 (18)	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Michael Mitchell	2010	4809
17 (19)	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Marc	2010	4779
18 (16)	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Matt	2010	4650
19 (17)	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Manflesh	2010	4599
20 (27)	A-Z of Fetish Artists – The Hun	2009	4371

The all time top 20 once again saw only small changes in 2017. Unsurprisingly (given it's lead) my Mike Carcel A-Z article kept it's spot at the top.  Priapus of Milet-1 in second place closed the gap but not by much. These two articles continued to pull away from the nearest challengers but late-starter, A-Z article on Cavelo is in hot pursuit. He jumped two places to 8th and may well hit 4th place in 2018 at this rate.

Further down, A-Z of Fetish Artists – Platter had a another good year rising 4 places to enter the top 10 and is in touching distance of 8th spot. Is this man a new contender for the Fetish Hall of Fame?

The only new entry in the top 20 was A-Z of Fetish Artists – The Hun, which rose 7 places to grab a toehold in the top 20, pushing out 'More Bondage Sightings'

Michael Mitchell and Marc both recovered the places they lost last year

There are still no posts in the list later than 2012, but several are poised just outside it.
The top contenders in these years are 

2013:- my 2nd article on Mike Carcel which is stuck at No 30 (29), 

2014:- A-Z of Fetish Artists - Tagame (Part 1) is at 25 (23),

2015:- closest is A Christmas Criminal (ep 1-5) at 26 (72),

2016:-  A-Z of Fetish Artists - WoodunArt is at 59 (66).>

For comparison, my 'Index of Artists' page reached 16040 total hits during the year (up from 8664) 
which would have earned 3^rd spot in this ranking if I counted it as a post.
 It shows the continuing level of interest in artists who work in our field.

You can see from the list of missing years that the total hits method of assessing popularity is biased towards older articles and so (being a geek!) I worked out the 'total hits per year' since publication to even things out - see table 3 below. In this list, multi-part articles are represented by the highest scoring individual post and I have left out all 2017 posts which did not have a full year and are covered by a separate post.

Article	Published	Hits per year	Position (& last year)	'Total Hits' position
Priapus of Milet - 1	2012	3167	1 (3)	2
A-Z of Fetish Artists – Mike Carcel	2010	2645	2 (2)	1
A Christmas Criminal (ep 1-5)	2015	1868	3 (5)	26
A-Z of Fetish Artists - Malex	2010	1632	4 (4)	3
A-Z of Fetish Artists - Woodunart	2016	1452	5 (1)	59
A-Z of Fetish Artists - Jotto	2009	1341	6 (9)	4
A-Z of Fetish Artists - Franco	2009	1192	7 (7)	5
My Initiation	2012	1081	8 (6)	8
A-Z of Fetish Artists - Cavelo	2008	1067	9 (-)	6
A-Z of Fetish Artists – Tagame (Part 1)	2014	1045	10 (8)	25

As you can see, this method helps redress the balance, but the usual suspects still bag the top spots and no-one is going to shift them any time soon. My own 'Christmas Criminal' and 'Woodenart' retain the afterglow of their 'newly-published' effects in 2016. It will be interesting to see how they fare next year. Tagame is still hanging in but not likely to trouble the leaders.

Unfortunately the oldest A-Z entries, notably letters A-G, were much sketchier and originally had censored images so they are not well represented in these results. I have replaced most of the adulterated pictures now but my plans to revise more of these articles are progressing slowly. Cavelo was done a couple of years ago and has started to overcome the handicap of being one of those early articles.

The articles I post to this blog are very much based on my own interests and fancies but the results of this survey do help me plan future offerings. My readers preferences doesn't always match my own (where are Les, JoeT and Link?). Nevertheless it's gratifying to see such interest in the great artists who often have a fairly low visibility on the web.

Remember, this comparison is only made for entertainment, since I don't really know how accurate Google's stats are, I suspect they don't even count people who just browse through the blog roll. Also the hit numbers on older articles suggest that stats prior to the blog's temporary suspension in 2010 were probably deleted.

Thanks to all of you for your continuing interest and support.

The Estate

After lunch, Alexandre took me on a tour of his estate. We soon came across two men who were working together clearing some fallen wood. It was a sweltering day and they were wearing only underwear (both in the same shade of blue, which was the estate colour). Moistened by the sweat of their labour, the garments clung to their bodies most revealingly. Alexandre called to them and they stopped what they were doing and turned towards us, striking provocative poses.

"They want to be chosen to bed with you tonight" laughed Alexandre, noticing my surprise. "You can pick one of these two, if you wish, but there are plenty more working in the fields further on".

I must say that, looking at them, these two men did not look eager at all. They met my eyes with sullen stares. I supposed Alexandre must reward them in some way for providing hospitality to his guests. In fact, by some peverse law of nature, one of them had indeed taken my fancy. His very hostility stirred me, a challenge which was very masculine in nature.

Alexandre interrupted my thoughts, "Come, you don't need to decide now" he chuckled, having noticed the connection we had made. We turned and walked on down the path and he continued, "There are some other very handsome creatures down here, bringing in the harvest, but these two will still be here working when we return to the house. You'll be able to pick him up then if you wish and take him back with you for your shower".

Photo credit: Jordan-and-Jocelyn-by-Alexandre-Berthiaume

for other illustrated fantasy mini-stories, click on the label below

The story of Leo the Abducted Cop

I have updated my 2013 story of Leo, the black cop. 

Based on images by Bound Guys Studio,

 it tells how Leo is kidnapped and forced into a life of terrible servitude.

I have developed and spiced up the narrative, 

improved the flow and added some extra images

Read the revised story of Leo, the Abducted Cop

ref-390

The Most Popular 'mitchmen' Posts of 2017

Kalabro - Milking Factory

At this time of year it is my custom to indulge my vanity and geeky side by reviewing the year's posts to see which attracted the most visitor interest. According to my Blogger 'view count' stats*, the 20 below are the most-visited mitchmen posts out of all those first published in 2017

(titles have links to the original posts).

Posn	Title (+link)	Hits	Published
1	The Milking Factory	1411	Feb
2	Hunk Hunt – Mitch Colby 5	804	Apr
3	Siproites Transformation Art – 1	632	May
4	Hunk Hunt – Mitch Colby 1	602	Mar
5	Siproites Transformation Art – 2	582	May
6	Hunk Hunt – Mitch Colby 2	522	Mar
7	Hunk Hunt – Mitch Colby 3	465	Mar
8	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Zelolee	427	Sep
9	Control (by Chirenon)	422	Jul
10	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Yael	422	May
11	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Franco Part 2	419	Jul
12	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Zamok 1	417	Aug
13	Hunk Hunt – Mitch Colby 6	406	Apr
14	Hunk Hunt – Mitch Colby 8	403	Apr
15	Hunk Hunt – Mitch Colby 7	402	Apr
16	A-Z for Franco Updated	389	Jul
17	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Yahn	386	May
18	Mike Carcel still top in 2016	385	Jan
19	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Zamok 2	376	Aug
20	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Zanuf	359	Aug

Stats collected on 30^th December 2017,

Where articles have equal numbers of hits, those with the later publication dates are ranked higher.

italicised entries are 'follow-ups' from multipart sets (see 'Duplicates' below) .

The winner this year is not an A-Z article for once, but a collection of Milking Factory fantasies by different artists. Themed posts like this have also done well in previous years (e.g. 'You're Going Down' which was 3^rd in 2015) and I particularly liked this group which included some stunning art by Kalabro. A similar cluster of posts at GMBA (current link in sidebar) also attracted appreciative comments so I wasn't entirely surprised by it's popularity, perhaps by the scale of it's triumph though! It fell just 32 short of Woodunart's record of 1443 last year

A bigger surprise to me was the popularity of my 'hunk' series about Mitch Colby and his fetish & wrestling careers. Every episode scored well and 7 of the 9 made it into the top 20. This was my personal appreciation of a man whose persona seems quite modest but who has some very attractive, masculine qualities. The top scoring article in the set (No 5) featured some of his erotic wrestling performances with some great-looking partners, all wearing sexy gear plus (perhaps most importantly) a spanking gif. Never underestimate the popularity of spanking! The next 3 ranking articles from the set were all about his leather fetish appearances which are my favourites too and probably less written about than 'erotic wrestling', where I know he has a lot of fans. There are lots of sites reporting this subject, so I didn't expect my contribution to grab so much attention. Colby's articles also benefited from being posted early in the year and some episodes were overtaken by later posts in the closing weeks of the year.

Naturally posts from January have an enormous advantage over December (see 'Averaging Hit Rates' below). My articles tend to be 'slow-burners' so it's not surprising that nothing after September even made the cut, which at 359 was higher than both last year's 317 and 331 the year before. Apart from the winner, all articles scored higher than the equivalent ranking position last year, significantly so for the 4 runners-up. (View last years table). This was in the context of increased visits to mitchmen overall.

The good showing by my two articles on Siproites was also unexpected, simply because that artist deals often with male to female transformations. I toned down that ingredient for my article, but it's still a bit off-piste for a gay fetish blog! I'm glad that many of you also 'get' this intriguing predicament art. It follows a similar good showing by my review of Yomero's racial and body size transformations posted in 2015.

'A-Z of Fetish Artist' articles usually feature prominently in these charts and 7 made it into the top 20 this year (against 11 last year). This was out of a total 15 published during the year which concluded the first edition of the series. The total was boosted by a couple of one-hit wonders but I think this was a good showing in a relatively weak year (imho) and it reflects the continuing popularity of this series. In 2018 there probably won't be many new ones, as I have reached the letter Z and plan to direct my short term efforts mainly to bringing the early articles up to a better standard.

I didn't do a bondage collection post until the last few days of the year, but despite this the number of articles with photographic content rather than artwork was boosted by Mitch Colby's muscle from 3 last year to 8 this.

~

Duplicates

In my standard table above, popular multipart series, like Mitch Colby this year and Christmas Criminal last year, can give a distorted view of the subjects people are actually looking at. If I eliminate all but the first entry in these series (those italicised in the table above) the revised chart below is produced.

Posn	Title (+link)	Hits	Published
1	The Milking Factory	1411	Feb
2	Hunk Hunt – Mitch Colby 5	804	Apr
3	Siproites Transformation Art – 1	632	May
4	A-Z of Fetish Artists - Zelolee	427	Sep
5	Control	422	Jul
6	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Yael	422	May
7	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Franco Part 2	419	Jul
8	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Zamok 1	417	Aug
9	A-Z for Franco Updated	389	Jul
10	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Yahn	386	May
11	Mike Carcel still top post in 2016	385	Jan
12	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Zanuf	359	Aug
13	A-Z of Fetish Artists – yy6242	353	Jun
14	The Look  (You won't mention this, will you?)	352	May
15	The Fetish Art of Beau	346	Jun
16	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Yamato	341	May
17	Mitchell's On Holiday	338	Sept
18	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Zagato	336	Aug
19	A-Z of Fetish Artists – Yoshiyo	333	Jun
20	The Look (Huh? feat Tony Orion)	328	Jul

This approach allows 7 more articles to enter the top 20 including 3 more A-Z's 

(which then claim half the top twenty places). Links are shown for these additions only.

Perhaps more interestingly, the unexpectedly profuse Fetish Art of Beau appears at 15.

This chart also includes 4 single photo posts with modified images and a humorous commentary 

(i.e. 'Control', 2 'Looks' and 'Mitchell's on Holiday'). 

My jokes don't usually do this well, just blame it on Brexit!

~

Average Hit Rates

I mentioned above how early articles benefit from being available for a longer period of time, so finally, I worked out how this table would look if I took into account the publication date (i.e. days on the site) as well as the total hits.

On this measure (ave hit rate for a year of 365 days) Milking Factory (with 1653) is just pipped to the top spot by my article on 'The Other Zero' (1653) which was published much too late (in October) to break into in the main charts. These two are followed by Zelolee (1404) and much further back by 'Mitchell's on holiday' (1153), Zamok - Part 1 (1144), and Mitch Colby - Part 5 (1099) with Franco - Part 2 (974) squeezing Siproites-1 (973) into 8^th place.

However this method is no less flawed than the simple comparison of totals, giving undue weight to later postings which fit their initial surge of readers into a shorter timescale. As a telling example, my December post of Fujimoto's 'Abducted Cops' has clocked up 211 hits in 16 days so far. That's a hit rate of 4813 per year. Don't ask me why! I excluded obvious anomalies like this but I don't expect 'The Other Zero' or my 'Holiday' post of the lovely Mike Radon to figure so prominently in future surveys! Time will tell.

Remember, this comparison is only made for entertainment, since I don't really know how accurate Google's stats are, I suspect they don't even count people who just browse through the blog roll.

If you want to look at previous years surveys click on the 'MPP' label below

Thank you to all my readers for your interest in my blog, 
I will publish the updated all-time list of favourites shortly. 

Happy New Year!

Beautifully Bound - A Selection

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Bareass Blogs 12

Bareass 'Brator Date in the Basement

......on Boxing Day! 

Go to No13 

 View series from No 1

 for more bareass boys click on the label below

Ministry of Silly Hats - 10 Santa's Gift

This post is dedicated to anyone who is alone,

 or feels alone this Christmas and I hope it cheers your day!

 

Nothing personal Frank, but I doubt that anyone could look sexy in a Santa Hat

Even Frank himself looks very doubtful here.

Maybe he's putting his faith in that smouldering look,

or is it just that he came down the chimney,
 while the fire was still alight?

 

Oh dear! You'd think the photographer would say, 

"Hey, Frank, just tilt the hat back or to one side. Give it a rakish look"

But no, he's opted for pulling it right down over the ears.

(That skinny belt's doing some peculiar things too!) 

 To give him credit, Frank looks pretty cross now.

Well, at least the hat doesn't resemble a male organ tip like hat No 9 did.

No, this one's red, floppy, with hair around the base......

No, perhaps we'll abandon that chain of thought!

 

Ah! Thank goodness that's over! 

Now we pro's can get back to some proper man-posing 

out in the open air with a chunky rubber accessory, 

That's more like it! 

Great pose Frank, reputation restored.


There's another Christmassy theme in Silly Hat No 6, 
for other silly hats, click on the 'hats' label below