Recent links -- Rickrolled
Apr. 15th, 2008 01:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackThat's the second biggest rickroll I've ever seen![1]
(link)
[1] I debated with a "Biggest. Rickroll. Evar." Simpsons reference, but decided the Monkey Island reference was better as (a) Monkey Island is the coolest thing ever and (b) it probably does come second best, after xkcd's take.
I get great fun explaining this at work, as people had heard of Astly, but never of the practice of rick-rolling. In short, what happened was the American sports team the New York Mets had a poll on their website to decide their new theme tune.
Well, I'm sure you can extrapolate things from there. The idea is that the winner would have been played in the stadium at their next game, and ideally adopted as a theme tune, playing in stadiums all over America for all time.
To what extent the club were bamboozled I don't trust the news, but apparently they resolved to play the top six tunes at consecutive games, and choose based on audience response "as measured by their marketing department". Some people thought this was a bit killjoy, but seemed utterly sensible to me. Promising to stand by an internet poll might be a bit stupid, but not as stupid as _actually_ doing so.
The aim is to find out what Mets fans wanted, but the technology used lets just everyone vote provided they _claim_ to be a Mets fan; however that's generally quite good enough for this sort of purpose[1]. The organisers can take the results with a little salt and based on the evidence choose a song popular with real fans: probably any other song in the top five was genuine.
[1] I still think it's a stupid way to run a national election, though, though I admit it seems to work.
This also means, apparently Rick really was played in the Mets stadium. So regardless of whether you think the organisers really were fooled (I doubt they were ever fooled into thinking this was a genuine preference, and I hear they were very annoyed, despite layout out a welcome mat for the idea) or if it was a success or failure, apparently you can consider a whole stadium full of people, even if not a whole city, rickrolled.
Completely lamentably the link in the news article goes to a real video of the stadium, rather than a direct video of Never Gonna Give You Up. No really, honest, it does.
FWIW, apparently Astley's response to the phenomenon was essentially "I think it's really funny" and "A new release? No, I'm not that stupid." The funny thing is, it's not _bad_, it's not a popular song, but I can see people listening to it because it's that funny.
Also, when I checked the wikipedia article, I was amused to see it was listed in the category of "internet phenomena". That's going to be a big one, then.
Terror law in tatters as extremists go free
(link)
What a marvellously accurate headline. I'm fairly sure there's a subtext that "terror law in tatters" is a bad thing, or a good thing, but I can't tell which. The content is very serious, but I just love how well-chosen words can convey precisely an opinion, even a deliberately ambiguous one (even though I don't suppose the headline was actually intended objectively).
(link)
[1] I debated with a "Biggest. Rickroll. Evar." Simpsons reference, but decided the Monkey Island reference was better as (a) Monkey Island is the coolest thing ever and (b) it probably does come second best, after xkcd's take.
I get great fun explaining this at work, as people had heard of Astly, but never of the practice of rick-rolling. In short, what happened was the American sports team the New York Mets had a poll on their website to decide their new theme tune.
Well, I'm sure you can extrapolate things from there. The idea is that the winner would have been played in the stadium at their next game, and ideally adopted as a theme tune, playing in stadiums all over America for all time.
To what extent the club were bamboozled I don't trust the news, but apparently they resolved to play the top six tunes at consecutive games, and choose based on audience response "as measured by their marketing department". Some people thought this was a bit killjoy, but seemed utterly sensible to me. Promising to stand by an internet poll might be a bit stupid, but not as stupid as _actually_ doing so.
The aim is to find out what Mets fans wanted, but the technology used lets just everyone vote provided they _claim_ to be a Mets fan; however that's generally quite good enough for this sort of purpose[1]. The organisers can take the results with a little salt and based on the evidence choose a song popular with real fans: probably any other song in the top five was genuine.
[1] I still think it's a stupid way to run a national election, though, though I admit it seems to work.
This also means, apparently Rick really was played in the Mets stadium. So regardless of whether you think the organisers really were fooled (I doubt they were ever fooled into thinking this was a genuine preference, and I hear they were very annoyed, despite layout out a welcome mat for the idea) or if it was a success or failure, apparently you can consider a whole stadium full of people, even if not a whole city, rickrolled.
Completely lamentably the link in the news article goes to a real video of the stadium, rather than a direct video of Never Gonna Give You Up. No really, honest, it does.
FWIW, apparently Astley's response to the phenomenon was essentially "I think it's really funny" and "A new release? No, I'm not that stupid." The funny thing is, it's not _bad_, it's not a popular song, but I can see people listening to it because it's that funny.
Also, when I checked the wikipedia article, I was amused to see it was listed in the category of "internet phenomena". That's going to be a big one, then.
Terror law in tatters as extremists go free
(link)
What a marvellously accurate headline. I'm fairly sure there's a subtext that "terror law in tatters" is a bad thing, or a good thing, but I can't tell which. The content is very serious, but I just love how well-chosen words can convey precisely an opinion, even a deliberately ambiguous one (even though I don't suppose the headline was actually intended objectively).
no subject
Date: 2008-04-15 02:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-15 06:34 pm (UTC)