4Chan, one of the largest message boards in the world, is known for its sophmoric hijinks (and of course, the infamous /b/-tards). So when Time.com opened up a poll to nominate the most influential people in the world, 4Chan quickly nominated 'moot', the founder of 4Chan, and voted him to the top.
But, not content to simply have their man as #1, they then manipulated the following 20 results, so that the first letter of each nomination read, "Marblecake, also the game." What does that mean? I'll let you and Google sort that out :-)
Though in their defense, they technically did nothing wrong. After all, anyone could organize a grassroots campaign to nominate a candidate, and anyone could vote for whomever they want. Whether that agenda be to nominate a national hero, president, or college age website founder, who cares.
And I'm sure Time.com doesn't mind the flood of traffic. In all likelihood, tens of millions of pageviews were probably generated. For the dying print industry desperate to find ways to profitably move online, I'm sure they're taking note.
I can envision a world where traffic-hungry sites cater to the likes of 4Chan, the SA goons, and Stephen Colbert's famous pied-piper antics. Soon our monuments and pop-culture icons will all be named after random internet memes and/or Stephen Colbert...as long as they help pay the bills.
As the web gains ground on the mass media as the primary driver of pop culture, who knows. It could happen ;-)
Time.com - The World's Most Influential Person Is...
Excellent job.