Neomeme

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People are strange. Saddam Hussein will be the next lonelygirl15.

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The latest little viral meme sweeping the blogosphere is the “Which Superhero are You?” quiz. Michael Arrington is Green Lantern, Jason Calacanis is Green Lantern, I’m Green Lantern, and even randomly sampled bloggers are all Green Lantern. Even those who are other superheroes are still between 70 and 80 percent Green Lantern, the same percentage Green Lanterns got!

Is the quiz rigged as some sort of twisted viral marketing gimmick for an upcoming Green Lantern movie? Or do bloggers and technologists truly share Green Lantern’s propensity towards hotheadedness and magic rings?

Looking at the source code for the Javascript quiz, it’s easy to see which questions make someone a Green Lantern. Each question has five possible answers, ranging from “No” to “Yes”. Each mark closer to “Yes” adds 5% to your score, so a “No” adds 0% to your score for that superhero while a “Yes” gives you 20%, in-between answers giving you a multiple of 5%. The questions that affect your Green Lantern score are as follows:

• Will you sometimes go too far to get your way?

• Are you interested in space travel?

• Do you have strong willpower?

• Do you have one object that you highly value?

Notice that there are four questions for Green Lantern. Since the most you can score on any one question, the highest Green Lantern score you can get is 80%! Many other superheroes have 5 questions, allowing scores of up to 100%. This explains why everyone’s Green Lantern score is 80% or less, and also reinforces the fact that everyone is Green Lantern, even those who got higher percentages for other superheroes, because their scores were 70% or higher. A 75% Green Lantern score is only 5% away from the highest score possible, making it equivalent to a 95% score for many other superheroes. Now for a closer look at the questions, and why so many bloggers answered Yes to most if not all of them:

• Will you sometimes go too far to get your way?

The key word there is sometimes. Research has shown that people taking surveys are a lot more likely to answer yes to a “sometimes” question.

• Are you interested in space travel?

Well, duh. We’re bloggers, we must have some degree of geekiness within us. Of course we’re going to be interested in Scifi and spaceships.

• Do you have strong willpower?

The weak-willed don’t have the willpower to make themselves admit it, even on an anonymous Internet quiz. This is a terrible quiz/survey question, but a great Green Lantern question, because he can only use his ring to materialize objects if he has the willpower to control them.

• Do you have one object that you highly value?

For this audience, this question is a no-brainer. Who isn’t in love with their Macbook or cell phone?

So is the Green Lantern going to replace Spider-Man as the geek superhero of choice? Probably not. This quiz suffers from poor coding and question design that weigh it unfairly in the Green Lantern’s favor. Sorry, bloggers. You can take off the power rings you found in your cereal now- the only thing you have in common with the Green Lantern is an overactive imagination.

My last post was about how the value of social news sites, and social networks as a whole. Right now, all social networks are based on a democratic, almost communist model. Everyone is equal, everyone is worth the same. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside just thinking of my own value. Unfortunately, historically, pure democracy has never worked, what with the majority of the population being stupid, gullible sheep and whatnot.

So, how do we fix vote-driven site? Simple. Turn the democracy into a republic.

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There’s recently been a lot of buzz about the true value of social news sites like Digg. Digg executives point to the hundreds of thousands of users, most of whom fit the affluent 18 to 45 male demographic advertisers would kill for, while critics point out the simple fact that the corner lemonade stand little Johhny runs is actually more profitable than Digg, Inc. It’s important to remember that profitability!=value. Even if they did not have any advertising, social sites like Digg and Facebook create enormous value for their core user base, who in turn artificially create value for the company. The sheer value of a front page link from Digg has been espoused by marketers all over. This value is expressed not only in the initial surge of traffic, but in the dozens of backlinks it generates.

Anyway, that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is why social news sites like Digg suck.

In a word, this is the trouble with social news sites:

PEOPLE ARE STUPID.

Think about the average user of social Web 2.0 sites. Think about the posters of countless bulletins on MySpace and notes about nothing on Facebook. Think about the many commenters on Youtube saying “teh m00n landing is fake duh11111″ and the swarms of ignorant fanboys on Digg. Aren’t you smarter than these people? Aren’t you more intelligent than the unwashed masses? Half of the population is dumber than average. Half(+1, since you cast a ballot for yourself/digg your own story) is also what it takes to win an election in a democracy. Coincidence? I think not! Let’s face the facts- the idiots are overrunning social networks everywhere. In the long term, this decreases the value of social news to their users, which in turn decreases the value of the social network itself, as it is nothing without good content. Social networks rely on. Those who have more friends on Facebook get their feeds seen by more people just like those who have more diggs gain wider exposure for whatever story they choose to promote. And since idiots band together(mob mentality, etc), it is no wonder that critics of content on social news sites have been increasingly vocal, complaining about duplicate stories, fanboyism, and lack of truly creative, innovative content, the kind that democratic social networks are supposed to bring to the forefront.

This could also be titled “the problem with Democracy” and make as much sense. We don’t need a democracy, we need a republic of social news. More on that in my next post, where I singlehandedly solve the problem of human stupidity.

So apparently it’s incoming links and not outgoing links that matter for traffic. Oh well, a post linking to the top ten blogs was worth a try. My insincerest apologies for subjecting you to such god-awful writing.

At the turn of the 21st century, Internet Appliances, crippled computers to be used exclusively for web surfing were all the rage. They were supposed to appeal to women and old people and bring ubiquitous computing into the kitchen and the living room. Internet appliances failed miserably, because nobody wanted an underpowered computer that could only function for one single task. The market for these machines was composed of geeks, hackers, and early adopters, people who were much more likely to buy a full PC anyway, and, as computers became cheaper and more powerful, the concept of the appliance died a quiet death.

But now, in 2006, the appliance is making a comeback. In fact, appliance computers have stealthily installed themselves in millions of homes, hiding under TVs. I am talking, of course, about game consoles. Think about it- a modern game console like the Xbox 360 PS3 or Wii is a crippled computer, adapted for a single purpose- playing games. It has a hard drive, processor, memory, is Internet-connected, etc. The difference from the appliances of old, of course, is that game consoles have a killer app- the games. Any old computer can browse the Internet, but only Xbox 360 can play Gears of War. The game console, unlike a PC, remains crippled by design, and severely limited in its potential. Nonetheless, it does one task, and does it well.

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Notice the abundance of alliterations in the titles so far? Yeah. Those alliterations sure feel good, like a massage from a sultry Swedish slut. Anyway:Since my foolhardy jump into blogging, I’ve been lurking in the blogosphere looking for ideas to appropriate inspiration. I thought I might take a look at the first posts of some popular/celebrity bloggers, just to see how they started out. Some were predictable, but some very surprising. Read on:
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And so, I take up blogging. Why? Why add another blog to the already overcrowded blogosphere? For one, because I find myself commenting more and more on various message boards and certain social news sites. If I have all of this random stuff to say, might as well keep it all in one place. Also so I can say yup, here’s my blog. Oh you’ve got a blog? Well, I’ve got one too. Who doesn’t in this day and age. Those luddites!

And, mostly, because just by writing this tiny, random blurb, I’ve already created a blog that’s in the top 91% of all blogs (i.e. not spam). I figureif I keep going at this rate, this single post will surpass the Bible to become the most read piece of writing of all time in a couple of weeks.

What will this blog be about, other than my occasional incoherent and decidedly unamusing ramblings? In a word phrase, technology and philosophy intertwined. You know, like xkcd but not half as funny or intelligent. Internet memes, hacking technology but also the mind and body, social networks and asocial connections, “teh internets” in a brave new digital world, and so on ad infinitum. Nothing about my personal life, I promise. This isn’t Myspace. You don’t see newspaper columnists writing about how its so complicated with that one girl, and neither should bloggers(for the most part).Basically, it’s stuff that I would want to see more of online, and stuff that I would want to read. Maybe you will too, nonexistent readers. Maybe you will too.