An Experiment in Precedence
There is something seriously fucked up with this country. A little while ago word broke that Britney Spears had lost custody of her children. I posted a link to the story. A minute later I posted a lie - that the United States had invaded and started bombing Iran. I wanted to see how many people clicked on each one. I monitored my site traffic to see who was clicking on what. In just two hours I had more than 200 clicks from Facebook, Reddit, and various RSS readers. Most of the clicks came from RSS and Facebook. I did not count search engine inquires.
From Facebook and the RSS feed, the option was two hyperlinks that appeared right next to each other like so:
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US Military has begun bombing Iran. And so another war has begun. We’ve invaded Iran.
Britney Spears loses custody of her children. Britney Spears has lost custody of her children to her husband, what’s his face.
This little experiment was by no means scientific. It just took people’s instinct into consideration by giving them a choice to see what was more important.
In just under an hour, the Britney Spears link got 202 unique clicks. How many clicks did the Iran story get? Six. Just six. It doesn’t matter that the war story wasn’t true. When presented with two hyperlinks you don’t know what the contents of the link will be. Your choice is made solely on the information presented in the text. In this case, more people were concerned with the private life of a celebrity has-been than the possibility of our government starting yet another war.
Seriously people, we need to get our priorities in check. The next time Paris Hilton or Britney Spears takes a shit, the Bush administration might use that as a diversion to pull off another heinous crime. Stop obsessing over the lives of the pathetic and start living your own damn lives. If you don’t care, the media won’t care. If you don’t watch, they won’t show. It’s simple supply and demand: take away the demand and the supply will falter.
Why do you care anyway?
October 2nd, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Wait, we’re only bombing Iran now? What took so long? Why does America hate America?
But, seriously, I think I can solve both these problems. Let’s allow Iran’s president to get full custody of Brit’s kids in exchange for his agreement to abandon all nuclear enrichment programs.
I know what you’re thinking. “What does Britney get?” The thanks of a grateful nation, of course.
October 8th, 2007 at 1:21 am
AMEN!!!