Diluting the Internet

My pet peeve today is Answers.com, which runs "WikiAnswers" (I refuse to link to these sites). They are apparently run by marketing geniuses who founded these deplorable companies thanks to the ability to have their vapid link-less "answers" appear high up on Google searches. I have learned my lesson, though--no more will I follow a Google page to these sites. They have quite clearly been created to gain market share by jamming key words into barely thought-out "answers." In short, the idea is to pump the sites full of link-barren word-salad garbage authored by know-nothings purely for the purpose of selling ads. I base this opinion on reading dozens of such "articles," but no more. I'm finished with answers.com. I refuse to be one of the 54 million monthly visitors to these sites any more. Barely better is ehow.com, which has published one million articles. I've got to give a little bit of credit to ehow, however. At least you'll find at least ONE link in these barely helpful "articles." The end result is always the same, however. Thousands of ehow "articles" are dashed off in one sitting by non-experts who are whoring their writing skills so that ehow can gain market share for its buckets of ads--enough ads to take in $200,000,000 in revenue in 2009. Consider an example - do you think that this took more than five minutes to write? Do you think anyone reading this article didn't know how to shop at a grocery store, but now knows? Here is the inside scoop on ehow published by Time Magazine. In this article, we learn that the authors of ehow articles are paid between $3 - 15. And it shows. Don't trust me on this. Go take a look. By the way, the above article about ehow was written by a guy named "Dan Fletcher" who seems to crank out an endless stream of tiny articles for Time (plug his name into Time's search field and you'll see what I mean). It's quantity over quality for Dan, who sometimes writes 5-10 articles in one day for Time. I'm sure that he's thinking, "Well, it's a living." I know that the Internet doesn't belong to anyone in particular. People have the right to write anything they want and I have the right to try to not read articles that are created solely for the purpose of filling web pages with keywords that attract Google. More and more, however, serious sites are being shoved downwards on Google's results pages by keyword laden ad-machines that are portraying themselves to be journalistic endeavors, and it's a shame.

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Can you tolerate NAMBLA?

image courtesty of the Federal Art Project, via Wikimedia Commons You think you're open-minded? What if the North American Man-Boy Love Association wanted to distribute a newsletter in your town? What if they wanted to hold a local parade celebrating pederasty? I am currently studying social psychology in graduate school, and I'm particularly interested in political psychology. One of my present research interests is political tolerance. "Political tolerance" refers to individuals' willingness to extend equal civil liberties to unpopular groups. When political scientists and psychologists measure political tolerance, they often probe individuals for their ability to withstand the most offensive, outlandish groups and speech possible. For example, a liberal-minded person may be asked whether they would be willing to allow a rally for the Klu Klux Klan or some extremist, militaristic group. Paradoxically, a truly tolerant person must be willing to allow racially intolerant speech. Political tolerance plays a cornerstone role in functioning democracies (at least, we think so). If voters can strip away the civil liberties of disliked political groups, those liberties lay on precarious ground indeed. If we cannot tolerate the words of anarchists or members of the Westboro Baptist Church, then we do not really believe in the boundlessness of speech at all. Academics say as much. In reality, voters are not so tolerant.

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