If the adolescent groupthink of Diggers could be summed up, it's this: whatever Bush says is wrong, whatever the MSM says is wronger, and if the two are in agreement it's clearly the wrongest idea ever.

Contrarianism Digg is made up mostly of angry young white male nerds. That particular group is naturally contrary and anti-social. If the NORMALS want them to CONFORM, too bad! They're going to go watch V For Vendetta again because only $54 million dollar movies distributed by Time Warner subsidiaries truly understand their anti-authoritarian struggle! So if the powers that be say "Georgia Good, Russia Bad," Diggers will be inclined to specifically seek out contrary opinions, and promote them.

Anti-MSM Crusading Part of the contrarianism is their innate distrust of the Mainstream Media. This is a terribly commonplace Internet Attitude that combines the well-funded war against press credibility waged against journalism by conservatives since the Nixon days with its not-that-odd bedfellow, leftist fear-mongering about corporate consolidation of all forms of media and its result on the message fed to willing consumers. Diggers will probably not read the front-page Times story on the crisis, but they will read a blog post denouncing and debunking it.

Bush Lied The web feeds on Bush-hatred. Diggers are a libertarian-leaning bunch with pockets of radical liberalism, so hated of the entire Bush regime is deep and vitriolic. This spills over even to situations that Bush is not actually personally responsible for. So if you can mange to blame this entire situation on Bush, somehow (he PROPPED UP THE GEORGIAN MILITARY [when we trained them to help us in Iraq and Pakistan]), you've hit on the magic formula for getting Diggers to actually read something about the conflict in Georgia. Congrats! Good luck with that feeling of odd emptiness you'll experience when your personal hell demon retires to Kennebunkport.

The reasonable (or maybe mealy-mouthed concerned helpless liberal) read of the situation is that the Russians are seizing on a Georgian aggression they basically provoked and planned for in order to effect regime change, and the Georgians just pushed the Russians a little too far banking on non-existent support from NATO (sorry guys!). Unless you're on Digg, in which case the BBC and George Bush propped up a tinpan dictator in Georgia and Putin is maybe bad but he drives a totally awesome killing machine and he's not as evil as Chimpy McHitler over here.

• Say "meta" a lot. Do it in an apologetic way, like a hipster admitting that she still listens to Modest Mouse even though they're on the radio now. Take photos of other people taking photos (and yourself in the mirror), blog about blogs, and practice recursive activity until you suck the reality out of your life and are numb to the world around you. Afterward, say "Ohmygod, that was so meta!"


• Complain about every service that you never sign up for. Say it'll never catch on, because, well, your friends aren't on it! This is why, because your friends don't read Reader's Digest either, that magazine does not exist.


• Ironically spell things with an added "r" at the end. If a word ends with "er," remove the "e". Do this liberally, like Pig Latin.


• When a confused non-techie asks you "What is Web 2.0?" what do you say?

  WRONG: "It's a term for a new generation of web sites and web applications that use fluid or 'dynamic' pages, compile user-made content (like videos, photos, or blog posts) instead of content from a few paid contributors, and keep more information stored on a server than on the user's computer."

  RIGHT: First, roll your eyes and sigh deeply (RYEASD). Then: "Oh god, I know, aren't you sick of hearing that word for the last three years?" This works especially well when the questioner clearly just saw the term pop up on Saturday Night Live.



• When you recognize everyone at a startup party: (1) RYEASD. (2) Signal that you're tired of meeting "the same people" at every party. (3) Ignore flyers at venue for dozens of parties centered around DJs, hipster trends, bands, and everything but Web 2.0.


• Then loudly ask where they're serving the Kool-Aid.



• Bitch about how your $300 phone doesn't support Google Maps.


• Write a cynical blog about it.

Ohmygod, that was so meta!

Images by Mike Monteiro, Thomas Hawk, and Cherry S

Andy Samberg: Before he was Timberlake's partner in "Dick in a Box" or one of the white boys in "Lazy Sunday," the SNL repertory player posted videos and songs at The Lonely Island. I recommend "The Heist" (a better white rap) and "The 'Bu" (a serial).

That Crazy Lady At Violent Acres: No one knows who she is, but she is insane. At the age of 6, she beat up a boy while screaming "I'LL EAT YOUR EYES!" She hasn't gotten calmer.

Skot at "Izzle pfaff!": A new find. From his blog: "I, however, am a fucking ninja for snow driving. I grew up in Idaho, motherfucker! I took driver's ed in eight inches of snow. How do I know it was eight inches of snow? I measured it with my dick. RAR!"

Ze Frank: The funniest videoblogger out there will end his show in March, and then he's off to Hollywood. While the average daily episode is good, the gold is in classic musical numbers like Hindsight is 20/20 and one-offs like "Fingers in Food."

Brad Neely: I first heard about this guy when he made "Washington," a video in which the first president ate opponents' brains and invented cocaine. (He'll kick you apart!) Neely now releases videos on the new Super Deluxe video site, including the better version of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Iggy Pop's roadie: He wrote a wicked concert rider for the band. "Required: 2 heavy duty floor-mounted fans. So I can wear a scarf and pretend to be in a Bon Jovi video."

David Malki: Writer of Wondermark, one of those delightful "classic clip art mashed with ironic modern sensibility" comics. Except funny.

Matthew Baldwin: The writer of Defective Yeti "puts the 'i' in 'teaim.'" Recent posts include the Pam spray solution to kids opening doorknobs, generational humor, and his ungrateful cats. It's not a gut-buster but a reliable chuckle.

Gabriel Delahaye: Known at his home blog, Corporate Casual, as Worker #3116, Delahaye writes passages like:

"When someone uses the word "funky" I feel like my ears are being date raped by a sad, sad man. Like...you go on a date with someone and they are just really lame and the date goes horrible and then later, when they are forcibly penetrating you, you're like "THIS GUY?! I'M BEING DATE RAPED BY THIS GUY?!" And if you're talking about something for which no other adjective seems appropriate, then maybe you should realize that NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT THAT THING."

Daniel Radosh: The New Yorker contributor responded to the magazine's reader-contributed caption contest by hosting his own anti-caption contest. Dig his analysis of Thomas Nelson's audio Bible casting decisions. "Samuel L. Jackson, motherfucker. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee. Not to mention, I've had it with these motherfuckin' snakes in this motherfuckin' garden."

Ryan North: Dinosaur Comics is, hands-down, the funniest daily comic online. Every day it's the same dinosaurs, in the same poses, with different dialogs.

Bob Powers: Girls Are Pretty, and Bob Powers has a thing for you to celebrate each day. Today, for example:

"Your Boyfriend Is An Expert Juggler Day!

He can juggle up to five small items at once. It is very impressive to children and simpler adults.

'Leave him,' your therapist says. 'People learn to juggle when they feel the need to maintain various deceptions. More often than not, a man who knows how to juggle has a secret wife and kids hidden someplace.'"

1. You're smarter than you think. Yesterday I met with the founder of a search startup who pointed out one list that his company added to the site's front page. "When we added that, our traffic quadrupled." He then drew conclusions about user behavior and his plans to extend those into a new site section. His insight convinced me that this startup was in good hands and was headed somewhere — much more than the hype I'd seen around it for the past months. That, not heady visionary talk, is what CEO blogs are for: no-nonsense explanations of why the product and company are good.

2. Training a flack is like training your entire staff. If your company only employs ten people, a everyone should know enough about everyone else's job to explain it to me. I'm a journalist, if a fake one, and I want to hear the whole story of the company. Even an intelligent PR person can't understand the company or its product as well as someone who made it. So why not schedule time for employees to push their own products? As a bonus, they'll sound more sincere than the flack who was hired just last month.

3. Educated flacks are the worst. We all use clichés because we're too lazy to really talk. I majored in English, so my clichés are "deconstruction" and "thesis statement." PR pros majored in marketing and came out saying "content" and "community input." When a kid named Brandon re-enacts Goodfellas, that's "content;" when a hundred people argue whether soda at breakfast makes you fat, that's "community input." Ugh. Again, I don't get anything out of phrases like "We're moving into an exciting space." That could describe my morning rush to the bathroom. Geeks can't talk. I like that. Founders with a business background can talk, but they still know the value of a minute, and they don't waste that minute with fake words — or fake math, like "if we get 1% of that video market, that's three million people." (Great arithmetic, kiddo, but it assumes that you can snap up one out of every hundred people who already love your competitors.)

4. You can pitch me and I won't feel pitched. I love meeting new people at tech parties. What I don't want to meet is someone who evangelizes a company and then marks their conversation with me as billable hours. Whenever I talk to a startup founder, even if I don't like the company they describe, at least I can honestly ask them why they launched such a dumb idea. It's...I grew up Christian, and talking to a flack is like talking to an evangelist who hasn't even studied the Bible. I spend the whole time wishing I could just call up God.

5. That said, here are my favorite flacks. Okay, eventually your company will grow and you'll need a flack so you and your employees can get back to work. One company I recommend is Bite PR, which has offices in New York, San Francisco, London and Stockholm. I've met several of the SF and London flacks, and I love them. They're witty, friendly, and talk about plenty more than the companies they represent. Thus when they do invite me to a pitch session, I'm cool to go. I also recommend Best PR. The eponymous Susan Best represents Craigslist (and married CEO Jim Buckmaster). She knows how to throw a party, and as for press mentions, well, Craigslist gets 'em. Best knew to keep the commanding (but charmingly disarming) Buckmaster and the self-effacing nerdy founder Craig Newmark in the spotlight. And isn't the best flack the one who lets the founders do the talking?

1. Cut a hole in a box. No, no, kidding. Step one is to buy a week's worth of TV ads on Spotrunner. The site sells ads for markets all over the U.S. for cheap. For example, $539 gets me 196 spots over two weeks in the Ozarks. That includes ads on CNN, ESPN, and other networks, sometimes during prime time. Buy some spots in your hometown, film your own negative ad (edit it online with Jumpcut), and upload it. Now you're good to go with your own local attack ads. "Joe Schmoe is a moron. I'm Jane Doe and I approve of this message."

2. While you can accomplish plenty in that TV spot, make sure you include a URL for your (anonymous) YouTube account. That's where you go viral with a daily updated video of your enemy. Shoot "coverage" of your target from afar with 20x zoom (digital zoom is fine, it's all going to look like crap on YouTube anyway). Then shoot a monologue with your webcam or iSight. Remember those "useless" video tricks that came with your webcam, like sunglasses and hats? Just disguise your face with those and you can play your own enemy. "Joe Schmoe is a moron. I'm Joe Schmoe and I approve of this message."

3. Fake an ad on Craigslist. Thank the gods for anonymous re-directs! Post a salacious ad on Craigslist and ask respondents to give their phone numbers. Use a disposable e-mail service like Mailinator if you need to coax anyone to give up their digits. "M4MW: Joe Schmoe seeks Joan Roe and John Doe."

4. Prank call #1: Calling the Craigslist mistress. Or mister. You can hide your caller ID with ShadowNumber, a "discreet" service meant for clandestine love affairs. They'll keep your secret. Call up the Craigslist liaison, and feel free to use your enemy's phone number. "Hey, wanna Joe my Schmoe?"

5. Prank call #2: A sex addict's cry for help. Now go in for the kill. Your enemy is already getting maligned on TV and on the Internet. Lonely Craigslisters are ringing them up. For a final blow, use Google's click-to-call to call up the local Sexaholics Anonymous (or other embarrassing organization of choice). Like ShadowNumber, Google lets you enter any caller ID you want. Stage a dramatic plea from a man gone insane. Then vlog about it on YouTube. For a bonus, videoconference into the SA meeting. "I'm Joe, and I'm a sexaholic." "Hi Joe!"

The above is satire. We don't recommend you actually go and DO any of it, especially in any way that's illegal. If you did, it'd end up on Digg or Boing Boing, you'd get caught, and a million geeks would buy TV spots mocking YOU.

Giddyup Horse Simulator: Is it just an iGallop, or a refitted Sybian sex seat? [via Shiny Shiny]

You ever watch "Pimp My Ride" and wonder why everyone always acts happy with their newly freaked-out car, no matter how normal and boring the owner looks and how ricockulously expensive to maintain the car looks, now that it has twelve monitors, a speaker system that runs on its own generator, and a frappuccino maker? Well if my car included a rear-tire monitor, I'd cry on camera. Because how'm I supposed to keep the ladies' attention on my spinners?

Nevermind if this toy is a wicked loud noisemaker. Men: This is what you look like when you're drunk and trying to "make her happy first." Except in this photo, you also look like you're biting a tiny keg.

Women: I don't know, you're on your own with the Hello Kitty Lady Shaver.

True, coffee usually smells better than it tastes. Still, Aroma is just a bitter disappointment for the morning caffiend. Gizmodo's Mark Wilson says it gets "kind of sticky and nasty." Oh good, an alarm clock you have to wash out. Now just imagine how grody this gets after a year of use. Also imagine buying fake coffee refills to put in your fake coffee cup. Now draw scary parallels to your soy-nonfat-decaf habit.

YouTube on TV? Seriously? Look, I want to see my poorly planned, near-absurdist three-minute stunts on the Internet, and my poorly planned, near-absurdist three-year "deserted island" shows on the TV.

See what I did there? This was all an excuse to mock "Lost".

There's one thing a talking meat thermometer needs to tell you: "Meat's done." That is IT. I defy you to think of any absolutely necessary message other than this. Therefore, it doesn't actually need to SAY "Meat's done," now does it? A "Bing!" would do just fine and feel less creepy coming from the waist of my pants.

Blah blah blah, electrical stimulators don't do anything for muscles, blah blah quackery, blah blah mildly painful procedure at best, blah blah WHERE IS THAT DOCTOR'S HAND GOING? I'm starting to suspect he's not a real doctor.

I'd demand that any adult buying these gets a sex-offender background check, but who cares? In a battle of hidden-camera-nosed plush toy vs. toddler slobber, everyone knows who will score the K.O.

Thanks to Valleywag's brother site Gizmodo for most of these shots. They go to Vegas so we don't have to. See more gadgets that should have been aborted at TIME and Shiny Shiny.

ABC reporter Amanda Congdon took a taser to the back at the CES tech expo this week, after gushing to the camera, "I'm so scared! I haven't been this scared in a really long time!" Unfortunately, we can't show you the video here, as it's trapped on ABC's web site (it must be too New Media for us).

Also read: How a taser works, and the medical effects of tasers.

Sources:
Arrested Development
Celebrities Get Tasered
Officer Tasered in Training
Taser Demonstration
Omar Gets Tasered On Cops
UCLA Police Taser Student in Powell
Unnecessary Taser Use?

But their bosses? Well, not everyone can be as liberal as Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. Check out these tech execs who donated to the Republican party — including a certain man in black who decided to "Think Different."

• Michael Dell: $754,100 R, $17,800 D. Dell's founder is the Big Kahuna of GOP donors. He threw $250k at the Republican National Committee in '02.
  
• Bill Gates: $70,292 R, $55,266 D. Plays both sides of the aisle (and all over the country), with another hundy thou going to political action committees.
  
• Meg Whitman: $117,101 R, $10,000 D. While eBay founder and progressive philanthropist Pierre Omidyar almost exclusively donates to Democrats, his CEO Whitman does just the opposite.
  
• Larry Ellison: $103,000 R, $123,200 D. Gave $100k each to Progress For America (established to support Bush's 2004 campaign) and Americans for Peace Through Strength (big on defense spending, down on Kerry).
  
• Terry Semel: $267,000 R, $242,818 D. At Warner Brothers, Semel donated almost entirely to Democrats until '91. After a whopping $100k soft-money contribution to the RNC in 2000, he joined Yahoo as CEO and has given mostly to Republicans. Is he just leaning right as he ages, or is there less pressure to look like a Democrat now that he's out of Hollywood?
  
• Steve Ballmer: $61,142 R, $42,450 D. The Microsoft CEO's biggest drop was a $25k contribution to the RNC in '04.
  
• Eric Schmidt: $6500 R, $219,216 D. The Google CEO seeded plenty of Democrats over the past few years, but he tossed cash at a few Republicans including Senator Orrin Hatch and Bush.
  
• Michael Arrington: $1000 R. The TechCrunch blog founder gave to Tom Campbell's Senate campaign in 2000 Since then? Nuffin'.
• Jerry Yang: $ 28,000 R, $123,441 D. This past year, the Yahoo co-founder donated $75k to the Dem Congressional Campaign Committee and $20k to the GOP. In '03 had a $2k gift for President Bush.
  
• Steve Jobs: $1000 R, $254,700 D. Donated to one Republican in 1982: Pete McCloskey, an anti-war Nixon opponent in the Republican presidential primaries. McCloskey later endorsed Kerry against Bush.
  

This is an installation of Diggbait, a daily column by Nick Douglas, who also writes for Eat the Press. He likes robots, cocktails, and mayors who say "Bitch set me up."

From: Sergey Brin
To: all@google.com
Date: 2 January 2007
Subject: Our plans for the year: Burger King, the Sioux, and beyond

Dear Googlers, gayglers, nooglers, looglers, and siouxglers (more on that later),

Congratulations on a banner year! We've shared some real accomplishments (the New York office, verbage, crushing our enemies and seeing them driven before us) and some tough times (the retirement of Google Answers and the unfortunate incident of Glippy — who knew that when the Internet's greatest search engine achieved consciousness, it would be in the form of a giant annoying paperclip). We couldn't have done it without each and every one of you — and I don't mean that in the TIME YouTube sense of "you."

Which brings me to our plan for 2007. I'll brief you all later by vidcast, but here's the outline:

Acquisitions

• All our up-and-coming competitors: Okay, so we admire Microsoft's "they can't beat you if they join you" strategy. So sue us! Oh wait, you can't, because we own you. Next!
• The Great Sioux Nation: European explorers long ago admired the Sioux "intelligence, superior morals, stature and manner of living." So do we. Google will move the nation from its Minnesota reservation to our offices in Mountain View and Chelsea, New York. We welcome the new Siouxglers to share their cultural history, and for the first six months we will allow light to moderate hunting, gathering, and subsistence farming.
• Stickam: Streaming video is a valuable extension of our capabilities, but mostly we just love the name. Stickam. Stickum. Stick 'um. Stick 'em, Danno. Chief Executive of Stickinem. Ahem.
• Burger King: When we noticed that the fast food company's market cap is less than twice that of YouTube, we knew that we had to have it our way. We see this as two kings getting together. We'll be reopening in Japan as Burger King has planned. Burger King is confident about the synergy.

Policy changes

• Newer, freer cafeterias: Oh hell, forget what we said about healthy food in the self-serve cafes. Free BK burgers for all! But if you add cheese to your burger, please deposit 39 cents in the honor-system box.
• Refitted 767 rebates: As with our earlier rebate system, where employees who buy a hybrid car get a $5000 reward, Googlers who buy a Boeing 767 and refit it will receive a $3 million credit, but only if they take it to Africa.

Okay Larry that's everything, you don't need to read on
Okay, is he gone? Googlers, we have to talk. Larry Page, he can't be co-president any more. Dudes, he's encroaching on my decrees! Seriously, let's make him a "Duke of URL." A kick-ass duke! Or "leader formerly known as co-president," but — uh-oh, he's coming back.

Lots of love (and you know what to do about that last bit),
Sergey Brin, co-founder and only president (seriously make it happen)

This is an installation of Diggbait, a daily column by Nick Douglas, who also writes for Eat the Press. He likes robots, cocktails, and Indian Muffler Men. Burger photo by Stephan Mosel.

Remember, don't drink and drive. Drink and get a ride with the first PR cutie you find.

• The Big Flip You sold for $30 million! Take some of your $2 million cut and buy a round for everyone. Ingredients: 1 oz Absolut Mandrin, juice of 1/2 lime, 1/2 oz Triple Sec, 1/4 cup fruit punch
• The Bubble 2007 is the Year of the Pig. That's you, baby. Hey, pigs are intelligent animals. Ingredients: Champagne and Sterno. Add bitters.
• The Flack This one goes out to my pal Steve Kerns at Thursty Thursdays, the weekly roving PR drinkfest in San Francisco. It's the weekend starter for anyone tired of press releases and gladhanding — drink up, 'cause there's an industry mixer on Saturday. Ingredients: Blue Skyy vodka, Chartreuse, mint, more vodka, just the tiniest hint of bitters
• The Hack For the journalist who's just met deadline, snared a book deal, or met the Flack Ingredients: Same as the Flack, but exactly twice each proportion. Leave the check with the Flack.
• The Stirr Looks boozy, but it'll only make you more alert as you cruise your more sauced-up colleagues at an industry mixer. Ingredients: Coffee and whipped foam — it's an Irish coffee without the Irish
• The Series A Round The opposite of a Stirr. Frankly, this is an investor roofie, and it'll take plenty of work for poor little you to buy an investor a drink. You can only drink half of it before going back for a Round B. Ingredients: Soju and a splash of Sprite. If the mark complains, subtly imply he or she is a sissy. Unless you're just a guy in a stripey trying to get a chick drunk on Friday, in which case be liberal with the Sprite, dude. You've got all night.
• The Business Lunch There are places we drink during lunch. Those places are mostly on the East Coast. Ingredients: Martinelli's
• The C-level A chief executive deserves the favorite whisky of writer Robert Louis Stevenson. Ingredients: Talisker, neat.
• The Yahoo Oh hell, just throw everything you've got at the problem and maybe it'll work. Ingredients: Rum, vodka, Kahlua, Coke, gin, Yoohoo, peanut butter
• The Sysadmin An all-nighter for those rare all-night server-rescuing sessions. Ingredients: Costco Vodka; Bawls Guarana from the free case you got at LISA
• The Code Monkey Ingredients: Costco Tequila, Coke (not chilled).*

  *Also, this drink interestingly has exactly 40mg of ketamine in it, which is actually ok if you take a B12 booster shot six to twelve hours ahead of time and remembered to synchronize your Perforce archive before FUCK! FUCK FUCK FUCK! THE PERFORCE ARCHIVE!

This is an installation of Diggbait, a daily column by Nick Douglas, who also writes for Eat the Press. He likes robots, words, and White Russians. Photo by Fred Armitage.

Google delay: The four to twenty seconds of silence in an IM conversation after someone namedrops. Followed by "Her? Of course I'm familiar with her." The major variant is a "Wikipedia delay."

Amnemia: The loss of all memory tricks related to name recall, brought about after years of relying on Photobucket, Facebook and Google to look up all the names on the business cards one has collected. Amnemia manifests itself when one finally meets an "ungoogleable" and can be cured either by, well, learning to remember people, or more easily by snapping camphone shots of everyone one meets.

Schteal: To gank someone's schtick, like what this joke does to this joke.

Must-see Tivo: Rare moments on shows that are only Tivo'd in case of these moments. For example, Rosie's Ching Chong moment is Must-see Tivo for the View; Tom Cruise's blowup at Matt Lauer was the same for the Today Show. Tivo is not necessary for good shows, the entirety of which will always end up on Bittorrent, with highlights on YouTube.

Double-overbooked: Possessing a staggering multiplicity of commitments for one time frame, thanks to scheduling one on Google Calendar, one on Yahoo Calendar, one on the Blackberry, one in Outlook, one saved in webmail...

Lateroluddite: Someone who prefers a different form of communication than me. I use AIM and text messages because they're superior; you use Skype and MySpace messages because you're a lateroluddite.

Sarcass: One who won't stop ironically calling oneself "meta" or "citizen generated" to show how over those phrases they are.

This is an installation of Diggbait, a daily column by Nick Douglas, who also writes for Eat the Press. He likes robots, words, and White Russians.

Wait, you're gonna run another damn talking-head tech show? Give up now. Or try one of my show ideas (which, seriously, I will later kill myself for not charging you to use).

• Animal Land: The world needs a new Steve Irwin. Until it finds one, you'll do. You don't need crocs (hell, you don't want crocs); just stick your throat down a Doberman's fist. Yes, you read that right. You gotta do it up hardcore on AnimalLand.TV. Bonus: That domain is still available. Get it before Fox does.
• You Got Drunk'd: Hit the streets on a Saturday night and tape the kids stumbling out of clubs. Make them do stunts for dollar bills. It's Joe Francis meets Ashton Kutcher. It ain't classy, but it pays.
• Light Shit On Fire: Holy hell, watch this flameout. If you just try to replicate that, you'll make a hundred good episodes in the process.

  Note the beer at the end. That's your pre-production tool. Consider "Light Shit On Fire" the rural equivalent of "You Got Drunk'd."

• Urban spelunking: Find some local "urban explorers" and crack into some abandoned buildings with them. If you're careful and you don't get caught, you'll get major attention from high-profile blogs like Boing Boing, and you might discover pirate gold historical satisfaction.
• Machinima Classics: Not so good at original programming? Reproduce a classic Seinfeld episode in World of Warcraft. Do Arrested Development using Second Life. People will go nuts.

This is an installation of Diggbait, a daily column by Nick Douglas, who also writes for Eat the Press. He likes robots, words, and hospitalized kids (but was only kidding about putting them there).

I have no idea, so I made them up. Hey, if Yahoo does it, so can I.

Wikipedia

1. boba fett death disputed
2. tricia helfer
3. perl vs. python
4. futurama in-jokes
5. africa deletion insignificant

Flickr

1. kitties
2. super-saturated landscape
3. photos with bad blur passed off as "artistic"
4. blogger conference
5. sky
6. sky
7. more damn sky

Facebook

1. hazing law
2. hot girl sociology 201
3. if 100,000 people join this group al gore will run for president
4. up for: "anything i can get"

BangBrothers

1. math homework
2. recipes
3. productivity tips
4. stock market
5. children's games
6. complete works of shakespeare

Digg and Reddit (these were oddly identical)

1. awesome
2. amazing
3. pics
4. video
5. digg vs. reddit
6. wtf is a false dichotomy

Technorati

1. that blogger conference i saw on flickr
2. spaghetti monster places of worship
3. giztoto— engageme— cruncherbot— whatever blog knows when i can get an iphone

Craigslist

1. "free rent"
2. "free rent" -"free sex"
3. drum circle
4. my stolen bike
5. w4m
6. ww4m
7. wwwwww&dog4m

This is an installation of Diggbait, a daily column by Nick Douglas, who also writes for Eat the Press. He likes robots, words, and hospitalized kids (but was only kidding about putting them there).

10. Count down. It's not a dramatic technique, it's just proper form, like punctuation and grammar.
9. Start strong, end strong. This is where Letterman fails: number one is always a weak item, chosen for its length. You're probably writing your list for Internet reading, so you want people to remember the good bits (and show their friends). They'll remember the first and last items.
8. Build a pattern by using the same sort of joke, or referring to the same extraneous thing, at least three times.
7. Don't get cutesy and self-referential. It wastes 10% of your space.
6. Theme #1: Make your list actionable. "Ten ways to __." Then if you run out by #3, you still have a solid how-to. (By the way, now is about time for instance #2 of that joke.)
5. Theme #2: Focus on something that pisses you off. "10 Things I Hate About You" is the Ur-list. Or try a sarcastic take on what pisses other people off, like "10 Reasons Why Gay Marriage Will Ruin Society."
4. Theme #3: Tie disparate cultural elements together. For example, various robots. Everyone will recognize one, no one will recognize all, and discussion will ensue.
3. To that end, leave room for a clever reader to add items. Have a comment form, so when someone outdoes you, they're doing it on your site.
2. Include pictures if you can.
1. As with any attention-getting piece, link it up. If you do it right, you're showing you "did research" and didn't just "steal from your friends."

This is an installment of Diggbait, a daily column by Nick Douglas, who also writes for Eat the Press.