For all the attention every little gem of humor buried on the internet gets, sometimes some of the funniest things are right under our noses.
Point in case: the Yahoo! News Message Boards.
I guess you can chalk this one up to allowing the general public to comment at will on the most-visited site on the internet. It's kind of like the eBay effect, only eBay is the 5th most-visited site on the internet, not the 1st.
Let's take the screenshotted article at hand: “Internet authority designates .jobs, .travel extensions” (message board).
Such a serious article, yet out of 41 comments, ONLY 5 ARE EVEN REMOTELY SERIOUS. 5 out of 41. And 3 of those are from the same user. For consistency's sake, let's just say 10 of the remaining 36 comments are repeat users. This still means that if the feedback on this article represents a random sample of Americans, the current National Maturity Level (NML) stands at just under 10%.
I would've put the figure at 6 out of 41 serious comments after reading Msg 41:
Subject: But dot ADU would have made sense
by: mrdicknibbler 04/08/05 07:54 pm
Msg: 41 of 41
.ADU for all sites with adult material.
It would have been so much easier to filter and keep separate.
Sort of like dot GOV where you keep all the pr0n seperate from real life.
But giving credit to anyone with the Yahoo! ID “mrdicknibbler” for a serious porn industry comment would be like allowing Michael Jackson to read a naptime story to an all-boys kindergarten class.
I believe the award for “Most Pseudo-Intellectual Comment” goes to Yahoo! user “vartemov”:
Subject: I don't know why we even have .COM
by: vartemov 04/08/05 07:20 pm
Msg: 11 of 41
What kind of breakthrough in our understanding of the universe is needed to get rid of these stupid “.com”, “.net”, etc?
Excellent point, vartemov, I'm sure it's just a small infrastructure misunderstanding that will soon work itself out.
And of course, what Yahoo! News Message Board would be complete without the obligatory tubgirl.com reference. You know I already clicked on it.