counting clicks

Sure, they say it is all about clicks, and "they" are talking about calculating website visitations, drilldowns, pageloads, pauses, meanderings, and that sort of digital thing. SEO. All that. Not that I for one have ever been fully persuaded by such sales pitches and alleged monetary equations. Back in 2008, when I first started my business, I had people pitch me this or that "SEO optimization" scheme with robust assurances that such clicks would yield the sound of coins jingling in my pocket, or the silent chafing of high-denomination bills in my pants. I never fell for such outsized pitches, not for the type of work I was doing and still am performing. But I want to make a point about "clicks," and the point is this: is there any more resolutely and resoundingly certain a click than the sound of clicking shut the plastic top of your shampoo container in the shower? (I don't use conditioner, so we're talking shampoo, unless the shampoo has a conditioner built in.) Click. I love that sound, its unmistakable identity, its signature backstory of rushing water, frothing hair, cascading suds. Click. The signal of an act completed, the transition to rinsing and then the steaming nudity of inescapable self. Click. Where there is no counting, save the solo aria of One. (Or is it Zero?) Click.