How TIME Lost Its Reputation

TIME has finally released the result of an online poll where people voted for the “Most Influential Person of 2008“. And suprise suprise (pfft), 4chan mogul empire’s Dark Lord, moot has won with an overwhelming majority. But honestly, does TIME does not realised they were trolled? The moment that moot was inluded in the list, most of the anons at 4chan who have nothing better to do started voting him in the masses. Not only that, they also started to fix the vote

anons after knowing Moot is nominated

As you can see, gay politician Anwar Ibrahim suprisingly got no 2 on the list. But as the person(s) responsible pointed out, they wanted to give a message that 4chan won the poll, and inserted the enigmatic line “MarbleCake Also The Game” in the winning list. Ironically Anwar got no 2 slot because his name started with “A”, and as one of the people in the vote fixing irc channel put it, “because he is a gay faggot and we like to make them famous”

So how did a group of anons, who if they had time could have found the cure for cancer fix the vote for one of the most well known magazine in the world? Well by hard work, sloppy security and the fact that they have nothing better to do. Links to fix the votes, softwares like Mooter and MOOTHATTAN, anything just to make sure moot won. They do them all.

You can read all about the hack at the “Inside The Precision Hack” article.

But what really does this tells us? Well basically, TIME’s voting system is now old and flawed. Online voting is only relevant when EVERYONE has the same tools, in this case, the internut and PC. Most of the target people don’t even bother going, and votes can be cast more than once. Thus giving out uneven number. This among other stuffs had downgraded the value of this poll significantly. Last year, the award was given to Korean Pop singer and dandruff extremist RAIN, most likely by rabid fans clicking the vote link as fast as they can go. Thus in the end, TIME has finally killed its own poll, and in turn, it’s own reputation. Only a fool would be proud of the result of this poll *cough*PKRsupporters*cough*. Ironic that in the past, they had cancelled out more legit poll result than this, the most prominent one where wrestling idol Mick Foley had a commanding lead but was disqualified when as TIME put it, “did not contribute anything significant”. Needless to say, not many was amused this time.