The guys behind LOLcats might be more powerful influences on American culture than anyone anticipated.
That is, at least according to the 2009 Time 100, Time magazine's annual list of influential people.
Tuesday, Tech Crunch published evidence that this year's ongoing vote has not been in democratic hands of the public, but rather it has been puppeteered by the 4chan forum as a community-wide joke. It is not entirely obvious at first. The list can appear at first as a simple indication of one's delay in following news coverage. Upon closer observation, the list's screenshot from the time of Tech Crunch's coverage spells out an UrbanDictionary.com-worthy reference and the supposed nickname of the forum that birthed chanology, or 4chan's famed anti-Scientology movement.
Reportedly, 4chan is behind a huge number of cultural phenomena, ranging from the infamous LOLcats to the Pimp My Ride joke that goes along the lines of: 'Sup
dawg. So we heard you like _____ so we put a _____ in your _____ ...
It is also full of anonymous, uninhibited communication, creative exchanges, hacking advice, random (/b/) posts and many other activities that tend to drop lower on the radar than the inside jokes that have seeped into mainstream culture.
But this hack's cultural influence must be the strongest one yet.
As large as the community it is, 4chan's members did not individually raid the Time Web site and cast votes for moot allowing others to fall to fate. Instead, it was mastered by the precision hack - an impressive feat of auto-voting that proved not only the power of groupthink for the sake of lulz
but also focused in on exactly how flawed much of online security is.
One member disclosed the eye-opening screenshots behind the prank, which involved members' voting candidates up or down at up to 100 times a minute through self-developed software such as those dubbed Moothattan and Mooter.
The incident brings into question just how safe it is for a highly reputable magazine to allow the Internet to speak for the people.
Just this month, the United Kingdom's Telegraph.co.uk news site was bombarded with mocking, inappropriate Twitter messages after it attempted to publicize hash-tagged (or keyword) comments from readers via Twitterfall, a Twitter interface. Earlier this month, Twitter itself got hacked by a teenager.
If Twitterers - who aren't necessarily Web geeks or hackers - manage to exploit a site's social integration, aren't we underestimating the destructive power of a hacker-fueled forum like 4chan? Why is anyone still soaking in the delusion that community Internet involvement is foolproof?
It is shocking that Time still hasn't taken the hint of this attack, considering the current list is only slightly altered in spelling from the original screenshot and still sits as a supposedly accurate representation of public opinion.
Here's quick evidence: Last year's top 10 were, respectively, Shigeru Miyamoto (famous video game designer) with 1.7 million votes, Stephen Colbert, Rain (international singer), Noam Chomsky, Tyler Perry, Heidi Klum, Tyra Banks, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Al Gore and Mike Huckabee.
This year's top 10 are, respectively, moot (4chan founder), Anwar Ibrahim (Malaysian politician), Rick Warren (evangelical author), Baitullah Mehsud (Pakistani military leader), Larry Brilliant (physician, former director of philanthropy at Google), Eric Holder (first African-American attorney general), Carlos Slim (Mexican philanthropist and businessman), Angela Merkel (chancellor of Germany), Evo Morales (president of Bolivia) and Lil' Wayne (rapper).
Many places lower on the list are not only last year's top contenders, but also others such as Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey - icons of American culture who have received much more mainstream attention than any rapper, Bolivian president or forum founder.
Even if the people did not get their say in the influential vote, the influential actions of this self-directed group certainly proved to that 4chan earned its rank. Better yet, perhaps the 'chan clan influenced some Web sites to tighten their security before having faith in the Web community.
Olga Kharitonova is a junior studying journalism and a reporter for The Post's campus staff. Please do not hack her e-mail at ok137308@ohiou.edu.
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Opinion
Olga Kharitonova
