Alan Is Good

Very shortly, TIME Magazine is going to have to close the polls and admit that the Most Influential Person of 2009 is the founder of the darkest internet community in existence.  Interestingly, they won’t be altogether wrong in doing so.

Every year TIME runs this poll to see who the public considers the world’s most influential person.  Last year it was Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, and the year prior belonged to Korean pop sensation Rain. More »

Something very interesting happened on February 15th, 2009.

Act 1:  Anger

Early that morning, a disturbing video was brought to my attention.  In the video, a masked teenage boy picks up a house cat, slams it against the wall, and repeatedly punches and slaps at it.  He turns on the shower and gets the cat wet before leaving the crying animal in a heap on the ground.  The laughter and taunting of the poor cat made the video all the more disgusting.

It’s near impossible to NOT be upset after watching the video.  Eventually the video is submit to Reddit, a user-generated news sit where links are voted up or down by the community.  Enough people upvoted this video in just a few short hours to make the front page of Reddit, and thus its exposure increased exponentially.

More »