Happy holidays, AE readers! 2012 was a big year for us, and I'd like to take a moment and thank all of our community members who contribute to the discussion and make the AfterElton comment sections such a welcoming, witty and smart place to hang out. So thanks guys!
Now, if you're one of the many thousands of lurkers who just never got around to registering, why not make 2013 the year you get actively involved at AfterElton? We want to hear from you, so take a moment to sign up for an account so you can post comments and start forum topics of your own!
Now on to the subject at hand: 2012's most popular posts. We get a lot of questions about our content mix: why we choose to write so much about Glee for instance, or our seeming preoccupation with Teen Wolf, or why hot, youthful shirtless celebrities always seem to be so prominently featured when arguably more worthy, average looking mortals get so little attention. Well, the answer comes clear when you look at this list. These twenty features, in ascending order of popularity drew the most unique visitors to our site. Together, they accounted for roughly a third of our overall monthly visitor traffic for the year.
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20. Our Interview with Teen Wolf's Danny: Keahu Kahuanui
In July, we nabbed the handsome young Hawaiian actor who plays Teen Wolf's gay lacrosse player for an interview and extended photo spread.
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19. The 9 Most Annoying Gay Reality TV Stars Ever
Reality TV loves annoying gay guys, and so apparently do our readers. Some of the time. We ran down nine of the most annoying gay reality stars ever in this popular post.
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18.
The 10 Hottest men in American Idol History
This list had Kris Allen fans and Adam Lambert fans pitted against one another yet again. Can't we love both those guys? (And besides, Ace Young beat them both for top honors on this list.)
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17. Our interview and photo spread with former A-Lister Austin Armacost
Back when it aired, our readers were very vocal about how much they disliked the cast of A-List: New York. And yet, surprise! Our exclusive photo spread with A-List's biggest bad boy was our 17th most popular piece of content this year.
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16. The Hottest Moments of Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Okay, how could this not be popular.
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15. Our Interview and Photo Spread with Dancer Alex Wong
Get a hot So You Think You Can Dance alum out of his shirt and the people come running!
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14. The 10 Hottest Moments of Channing Tatum
Back in June we ranked the Magic Mike star's most jaw-droppingly hot moments. You stopped by to gawk.
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13. Our Interview with Matt Bomer
We took some flack for this one for not asking the actor about his personal life, but the interview still ranked as one of our most trafficked features.
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12. Glee Recap: "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger"
Our Glee recaps always do well, but the one for episode 314 (the one where Dave Karofsky attempts suicide) made it all the way to #12 on our annual list of popular content.
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11. The 100 Greatest Madonna Songs
Through the years, AfterElton has been criticized for not properly appreciating Maddona as a gay icon. We hope this definitive list, one of Louis Virtel's first features for the site, finally put that criticism to rest. It certainly attracted a large audience.
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10. The 15 Hottest Men of Game of Thrones
Winter is coming. But our readers would be happy to snuggle up with any of these fifteen fine fellows.
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9. Our Interview and Photo Spread with Glee's Grant Gustin
As soon as we had a look at the photos we knew we had something special with this one. We just wish we'd gotten Grant out of that hat for a couple shots.
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8. The Men of Glee: 10 Hottest Moments
Yet more Glee men making our most popular content list. And you wonder why we cover these guys so frequently!
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7. The Hottest Guys of New York Theater
We took a trip to the great white way for our annual round up of Broadway's most gorgeous men. Our readers were definitely along for the ride.
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6. The Hot Men of Team USA
We published several photo galleries of hot athletes this year. The one that most captured our readers' imaginations was this great gallery of U.S. Olympic athletes.
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5. The 50 Favorite TV Characters of All Time
We asked our readers to choose the TV characters nearest and dearest to their hearts. This exceedingly popular list was the result.
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4. The First Annual Hot in Hollywood Awards
When you add together the nomination process, the voting (over 800,000 votes cast!) and the results announcement, the maiden voyage of our annual Hot in Hollywood poll was one of the biggest features of the year.
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3. Top 100 Greatest Gay Movies
We turned to our readers to identify the greatest gay movies of all time. To almost everyone's surprise, Shelter beat out Brokeback as number one.
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2. The 2012 AfterElton Hot 100
This was the sixth year for our massively popular Hot 100 poll. And this year, for the first time ever, we even hosted a live event in L.A. to celebrate the winners and raise awareness for the It Gets Better Project. An AfterElton feature can't get much bigger than that. And yet...
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1. The Ultimate Slash Madness Tourney
This one came out of nowhere. We heard from readers that EW.com had disqualified Teen Wolf's "Sterek" from their favorite TV couples poll because they weren't "canon", so we launched our own poll in response, pitting our readers' top 32 male slash pairings in a March Madness-style bracket tourney. There are A LOT OF SHIPPERS OUT THERE! After 4.7 million votes were cast, Sterek took home the crown... and we had a whole new appreciation for the online might of slash fandom.
