The antivirus company Sophos sicced the Russian head of its Canadian antivirus lab on various scammy sites (original report) and discovered that entry-level scammers can do pretty well for themselves. Sophos snuck into the admin panel for the affiliate of one scam site , which offered free porn if you installed a nefarious video codec (really spyware). The affiliate in question made $6,500 for Aug. 2008, probably using templates and software provided by the scam network.

Another common scam involves using affiliates to sell fake prescription drugs, ostensibly from Canada. Since actual drugs aren't involved, the seller can afford to give the affiliate a 40 percent kickback; Sophos believes a single spam campaign could net $16,000 per day.

It's unclear whether Eastern Europeans can continue to con Americans into spending tons of money on completely ineffective health care "solutions," with internet propaganda, now that so many American scammers have jumped into that same game.

*Which means it's probably a marketing ploy for something.

Whether or not it's a symbol of the decline of political discourse, the debate certainly is a pain in the ass to follow. The Personal Democracy Forum, which organized the debate, encourages people to follow by watching a list of search results (which feels like any comment thread full of self-important randoms) or watching this page combining the Twitter feeds of Cox and the two debaters.

1. NOPE
Grabbed from the ether and copied all over Tumblr, a parody of the Obey Giant "HOPE" poster.

Less faithful to the aesthetic, but with a satisfying result:

2. President of Awesome
Taken from a 4chan forum.

3. Send Barack Your Baby

4. Barack Marx Hitler Bin Laden Birth Certificate
Made by Shakespeare's Sister, a blog that's now investigating the rumor that McCain fellates livestock.

5. McCain: For The Tech Illiterate
From Daily Kos.

1. It's scientifically impossible. Snopes already covered a similar hoax about cooking eggs with phones. As Snopes explains, the energy emitted by mobile phones isn't nearly powerful enough to sufficiently raise the food's temperature. A British TV show debunked the myth when it failed to even warm an egg under a pile of a hundred phones. And a YouTube commenter explains further: "A 1 kilowatt microwave takes around one minute to pop its first kernel, and that's in a closed environment. A cell phone transmitter operates from 0.1 to 1 watt, but this video shows these kernels popping almost immediately."

A poor grasp of science leads people to fear the technology around them. Everyone's vaguely aware that phones use radio waves, so they misapply the concept. The phones in the video are merely ringing, which only means they're receiving the radio waves that are always around us. If those waves popped popcorn, there wouldn't be an unpopped kernel left in the U.S.

2. It's got the same hallmarks of fakery as other viral videos.
Remember the viral Levi's ad and Ray-Ban ad? The actors in these videos have the same fake camaraderie. I always doubt a video's veracity when I hear someone say "Tell me you got that!" Strangely, no one ever seems to say that in real stunt videos: They know the cameraman got it, that's his damn job.

Okay, so who's making these?
These videos don't take much effort — just four phones and some time in Adobe Aftereffects. So anyone could have made them. But who would bother? Googling some of the video makers reveals they've been spamming blogs promoting their video. It's just one of the many annoying tactics born of YouTube, but at least it reveals that our creators are gunning hard to get a lot of attention for very little work.

That might be the behavior of a bad viral marketer. And I mean really bad — would any phone company actually contract videos like these? Can you sell phones by convincing stupid people that they'll fry their brains? Seems a bit counterproductive, but I'll admit it would be satisfying to see this uncovered as history's worst viral campaign.

Thanks to Cajun Boy for the tip.

New Math:

The Perfect Woman:

Bo's new EP, "Bo Fo' Sho'," comes out on iTunes on the 17th.

you forgot to mention that when the alien archeologist dig up our computers they are also going to find alot of blogs and articles from dumbass reporters that think they absolutely right and everyone else that disagrees is "half-literate". why don't you grown up and realize that if you blog about political news, be prepared to get alot of angry people. don't like it? get a different job and stop sitting on your fat ass, criticizing people that don't agree with you. feel free to retaliate and call me all sorts of names, it's your time to waste. I'll never be back here again.

Yeah, time for a change and with Obama you get 57 states. foflmao!!

You see Ken you idiot As an American I am so fed up with people like yourself trying to push hussein obama on us.

Well, used to like Hillary...but what does God say—about murder??? Let's pray for her and this party. We still need a supernatural intervention to make us one in love and peace. Only Jesus is that power!

Ken, if you are so smart why are bloging? You are too dumb to be a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist. Guess you get your kicks putting other people down.

Here's my concern.... "I WILL STAND WITH THE MUSLIMS SHOULD THE POLITICAL WINDS SHIFT IN AN UGLY DIRECTION." Barack Obama Well I stand with the United States of America and I believe its high time those leaked to terrorist organizations are brought to justice. I don't care who they are or how many.

Ken,

What was the purpose of your commentary?

WAS IT TO DEPRESS THE HELL OUT OF ME.

IT WORKED.

LOL

If Seinfeld episodes like "The Soup Nazi" had aired ten years later, think of how much more grating the reaction would have been. Millions of images of Jason Alexander emblazoned with the caption "I LIEK SOUPS." Millions more pictures of the Soup Nazi, posted in retaliation: "NO MOAR SOUPS." Naruto music videos based on the joke. Soup references in every webcomic. Soup Nazi cosplay. Peak Oil reached. Ron Paul elected President. The world's volcanoes erupt in unison. All because the Internet ruins everything.

In real life, references live for a short time but only rarely invade the public consciousness; original humor has an advantage. But online, the cost/benefit ratio of quoting, "sampling" or "remixing" someone else's fad outweighs that of coming up with something on your own, so everyone just parrots catchphrases on their t-shirts and blogs and webcomics. Because the Internet lets normal people make as much noise as funny and original people, the lame humor that usually dead-ends in offices instead spreads like crazy.

Of course the same thing happens more and more in other media; MTV makes whole series revisiting a past decade or an old band. Is this just something that happens every generation, or are we really drowning original humor in a sea of catchphrases?

By the way, the article pokes at several other truths, like "The worst of [Internet humor] is 'random' humor" and "Because if you scream a joke as it's being told, it's like you're telling it yourself!"

Photo: Josh Zubkoff

1. Fireland
Name: Joshua Green Allen
Best: The quote above, and: " What I do while going through the automatic car wash is really nobody's beeswax but I will say it's not particularly 'touchless.'"


2. Fedge
Name: Jeff
Best: "Did you hear? No 3G iPhone. They were all destroyed in that damn quake. What a travesty. Some people died, too. - Sent from a toilet in China"


3. Mat
Name: Mathew Honan
Best: "Why are all these POOR PEOPLE on my plane—do not TOUCH my MacBookAir! No in-flight lattés, WTF? Last time I fly Southwest... #sxsw" (For a week Mathew pretended he was at the annual tech festival.)


4. ScottSimpson
Name: Scott Simpson
Best: "The kid is cute; the father is ugly. I always forget: is it the cosine or the sine that allows you to solve for whether the mom is hot?"


5. AinsleyofAttack
Name: Ainsley Drew
Best: "You know how a Venus flytrap snaps shut when you poke it with a pencil? My vagina does that when you say 'recumbent bike.'"


6. Strutting
Name: Jay Hathaway
Best: "Heard of maxin' and relaxin', but can't figure out maxin' by itself. Unless it's something the Fresh Prince couldn't comfortably rap about."


7. Mike_FTW
Name: Mike Monteiro
Best: "Working out to Pavement is amusing. It's like neither of us is REALLY trying too hard."


8. Hotdogsladies
Name: Merlin Mann
Best: "Hipster-Hat-and-Beard-Guy-with-One-Pant-Leg-Always-Rolled-Up, you'll henceforth be known as 'Tattoos McFixiepants.' Or, 'TatMac,' for short."


9. Moltz
Name: John Moltz
Best: "Dear California: while we applaud your gay weddings, we don't really give a shit how hot it is there. Love, the Rest of the World."


10. Mulegirl
Name: Erika Hall
Best; "Damn right I'm having a Fluffernutter bagel for breakfast. (The fluff is 2 months past its freshness date, so I've dialed 9-1- on my cell)"


11. Meowrey
Name: Briana Mowrey
Best: "Good news! I found the greatest love of all inside of me! Other stuff I found inside me: sangria, Red 40, lactobacilli, tiny Dennis Quaid."


12. Lonelysandwich
Name: Adam Lisagor
Best: "I don't want to leave my office to pee because I don't think anyone knows I'm here today. On the other hand, I'm out of empties."

For each time you did the following in the last thirty days:

1 point

• Asked for a digg
• Added someone on Facebook the day you met them
• Visited MySpace
• IMed someone asking who they are
• Messaged someone on a site like Facebook when you could have called or e-mailed
• Used a "Sent from my Blackberry/iPhone/etc." e-mail signature
• Discussed an Apple rumor
• Made a joke about fonts

2 points

• Commented on a blog just to say you liked or hated something
• Posted a Craigslist missed connection
• Used MySpace
• Submitted your own blog post to Digg
• Asked someone to blog you
• Added to a Wikipedia talk page
• Bought a Threadless T-shirt

3 points

• Told a personal story in a Yelp review
• Used Tumblr
• Gave a bad review on Amazon to a book written over thirty years ago
• Added a celebrity on Facebook
• Made a YouTube response video
• Twittered about your blog
• Got fake-married on Facebook
• Friended someone on MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendster, or Yahoo 360
• Asked anyone to tag anything

4 points

• Invited someone to add their photo to a Flickr group
• Invited someone to a Facebook app
• Vlogged
• Made a Facebook event that wasn't really an event
• Blogged about dealing with someone in the service industry
• E-mailed a press release
• Wrote "why do I care" in a blog comment

Death Round: 20 points

• Sent an unneeded "reply to all"
• Sold someone's contact info
• Played Second Life
• Rickrolled someone
• Reviewed your own book on Amazon
• Complained that someone reblogged a third party's content without crediting you for finding it first
• Said the word "microcelebrity"
• Invited your whole address book to something
• Talked like a LOLcat in real life

Results
0-10: Get the hell off my blog. But first digg my story.
11-15: You must feel great about yourself. Add twenty points for taking the quiz.
16-25: Very mediocre. Why are you reading this on your Playstation? Go play GTA IV.
26-40: All your Tumblr posts are stolen from other people's blogs. Your Twitters are about Twitter. But somehow all the YouTube clips you IM me are two years old.
41+: All my base are belong to you. Oh god, you probably laughed at that. You can haz the finger, jackass.

Picture: A very funny College Humor article. Before you go, I was serious about the digg.

Dear god, it's — I mean at least the Ray-Ban video was pretty entertaining, the jeans jumping video a bit cool since it might be real. But "the perfect pour"? Is pouring beer from a height even impressive? I'm pretty sure any of my friends could practice for a few days and pour beer off a roof. Plus I instantly hate these guys for crashing that fictional party, and I'm pretty sure the cameraman does not know what "coup de grace" means.

In what I hope is not an authorized endorsement, sketch comedy group Wicked Awesome Films made a parody. The skit is wretched but I do admire the two-day turnaround:

So honestly, why is this the only format I've seen a in a YouTube stealth ad? Are the others just subtle enough that no one's exposed them?

After the first guy jumped into his jeans, I realized what the whole video would be: a shot-for-shot rehash of a viral ad for Ray-Ban. The two ads are so similar that the creators (unless they're phenomenally short-sighted) clearly wanted to be discovered. First, let's look at the two ads:

Levi's, 5 May 2008: Guys do backflips, swinging jumps, and other stunts and land in their pants.

Ray-Ban, 6 May 2007: A guy catches sunglasses on his face in increasingly impossible maneuvers: Off a house, off a bridge, in a moving car.

Similarities
The stories are the same: A simple trick to establish what we're watching. Then increasingly elaborate iterations, culminating in a stunt so dramatic that it requires a slow-motion replay.

The music is the same: A cool innocuous background beat loosely timed to the action.

The editing is the same: Quick pacing. Slick with dramatic angles, but calculatedly rugged with lingering shots on the guys congratulating each other.

The packaging is the same: Ray-Ban's ad was posted by "neverhidefilms," a YouTube user with no previous videos. The new Levi's ad comes from "unbuttonedfilms," another first-time user. The new ad is one day shy of coming a year after the old ad. The titles are analagous: "Guy catches glasses with face" versus "Guys backflip into jeans." No product is mentioned.

Background
While Ray-Ban's ad was launched anonymously, the creative team behind it soon came forward. Josh Warner, president of The Feed Company, explained how he promoted this viral video to Adweek. The team posted more videos, now more obviously advertising Ray-Ban though still without using a traditional ad format, to the YouTube account that hosted the original viral ad.

Extra evidence
Note the line at 0:36 of the Levi's ad: "At least there's no zipper." That's what clinched it for me: Levi's is the only jeans brand to actively advertise its zipperless buttoned jeans. The user name "unbuttonedfilms" corroborates this.

How well it's worked
Blogs like Laughing Squid and Neatorama posted the video with no guess about the creators (though political blog Hot Air guessed this might be a Levi's ad). Even G4TV's Attack Of The Show discussed the ad, crediting it to an unnamed group of gymnasts and making no mention of Levi's.

And of course even this debunking is giving them publicity. (Not that I mind as long as I'm getting some too.)

My Theory
Obviously the new ad has the same goals as the old: to market a product without actually naming it, by appealing to the public's love of Internet stunt videos. Most likely, The Feed Company made the new Levi's ad. If any other agency was ripping them off, they wouldn't release the ad a year later with the exact same techniques. And in a few days, The Feed Company will come out, because who can really deny themselves another round of publicity?

As with Arrested Development, Super Deluxe was a cult hit that just didn't get huge mainstream attention — like pretty much every video content site besides College Humor. But also like the show, it introduced some great talent who are going on to better deals. Well, at least one of them.

Brad Neely, creator of the classic "Washington, Washington" cartoon, got a TV deal for his two Super Deluxe series "Baby Cakes" and "Professor Brothers." Super Deluxe has a preview:

But if the site drops shows like Chasing Donovan and Derek and Simon (which already looks dead), I hope to god they get a deal somewhere else. Because I ain't watching "Tim and Eric" again.

After all, you release some trendy high-concept book, and for every person who reads it there are a hundred who just enjoy the concept and ten people who buy it just to put on the bookshelf. Hell, I had more to say about Freakonomics before I read it than after — I got the point by the time I'd read a review and half of the dust jacket. So if the book doesn't have to live up to its publicity, why not come up with a clever idea and outsource the actual writing?

The text itself is terrible. Here's the opening paragraph:

The deep waters, black as ink, began to swell and recede into an uncertain distance. A gray ominous mist obscured the horizon. The ocean expanse seemed to darken in disapproval. Crashing tides sounded groans of agonized discontent. The ocean pulsed with a frightening, vital force. Although hard to imagine, life existed beneath. It's infinite underbelly was teeming with life, a monstrous collection of finned, tentacled, toxic, and slimy parts. Below its surface lay the wreckage of countless souls. But we had dared to journey across it. Some had even been brave enough to explore its sable velveteen depths, and have yet to come up for precious air...."

But the project itself is ripe for sociological study. It's a fully and publicly documented interaction between over a thousand would-be authors, a postmodern literary critic's orgiastic wet dream. And the recently released analysis from De Montfort is a good read. The researchers study the actions and psychology of the most active editor, "Pabruce," picking apart certain edits, describing his relations with other editors, and guessing at his motives.

This is also the only research paper to ever include the heading "YellowBanana — genius, vandal or troll?"

So Penguin gets some academic attention, some PR, and no real lost respect for this side project. Plus they get to test some tools that might help when they really are farming books out to writing groups. I wish I got that much out of my last terrible novel.

"At a certain point you have 2 respect that I'm one of the last artist that still cares about the fans having the best time of there lives! Thanks 2 Bossip and Perez for taking it easy on me on the EW spaz... I did go in a little 2 much on that one. I'm sure there are some cool people who work over there and had nothing 2 do with that review. With all that said.... 'I'm still the greatest!!!' lol!! Oh and I was in the studio with T.I. last night.... so get ready!!!"

Did he just give a shout-out to who I think he did? Puke.

11. YouTube

At risk: Daredevils, fictional characters
Case 1: While trying to perform a stunt for YouTube, four teens crashed their Ford Explorer, injuring three and killing one. No details on how awesome the clip would have been, but hopefully it'd be more exciting than "ghost riding," the 2005-07 fad of rolling an idling car down the street while dancing beside it. The result of that fad, besides a few lame videos, was two deaths. Other stupid deadly stunts include subway surfing and fake stunts that end up in banner ads.
Case 2: A man who explained on YouTube how to tie a hangman's noose has been accused of inciting suicide. A few days after the news reported it, someone else posted instructions (though this user has posted plenty of other knot-tying videos, and who could hang themselves with the festive purple and yellow rope he uses?).
Case 3: Of course fictional characters die often and violently: Lonelygirl15, Harry Potter, and the radio star.


10. Myspace

At risk: The lonely
Case 1: Remarkably, no charges were filed in the case of the family who carried on a hoax relationship with 13-year-old depression sufferer Megan Meier over MySpace, then "broke up" with her and thus driving her to suicide. But this is only our first glimpse at two themes of Internet-caused deaths: Tragic romance and preying on the lonely.
Case 2: In this case, MySpace technically saved lives. Cops investigated a 12-year-old boy's MySpace death list, warned everyone who was on it, and searched his home. They didn't find weapons and he said he was just fooling around, so he was just charged with juvenile delinquency. Other death threat cases include a dog and another empty threat against high school students. But just to be safe I make my little sister keep a Google alert on her name, cause she''d be the first to go if some trenchcoated freak started shooting up the cool kids in her school.
Case 3: Of course while stupid people may reveal their murder plans on MySpace, they may be inspired by the site too. Heather Kane saw another girl on her boyfriend's profile and hired a hitman to kill her. Good thing she bumped into an undercover cop instead.


9. Facebook

At risk: Anyone who pisses off a muslim
Case 1: A Saudi Arabian father beat and shot his daughter earlier this year for chatting on Facebook. A preacher in the Islamic country called the site a "door to lust;" many Saudi women use aliases on the site and post drawings instead of photos. But there are still plenty of photos of hookups in the Facebook group "Single and Looking in Saudi Arabia."
Case 2: After a Jewish woman in Melbourne rejected a friend offer from one Ibrahim Dirani, he allegedly wrote to her, "I am Hezbollah and I am going to kill you and all of your family — promise you."
Aw,


8. Pornography

At risk: Viewers of extreme or illegal porn and the people who know them
Case 1: It's hard to feel too sorry for those who kill themselves after they're implicated in child porn rings, like these four suicides in 1998 and these six in 2004.
Case 2: Porn doesn't only kill the depraved. The story of Jane Longhurst, an English woman killed by "a man obsessed with violent sexual pornography," was tragic enough to encourage many UK lawmakers to ban extreme porn.


7. Spam

At risk: The terribly gullible
Case 1: Spammers and scammers can easily take your money if you're dumb enough to give them your passwords and financial info. But some Nigerian scams go far beyond online fraud; many scammers lure their victims to Nigeria to continue paying money in person; fifteen victims were killed after they got suspicious.


6. Blogging

At risk: Those already at risk of dying
Case 1: There's a trick to making listicles like this: Put the weakest item in the middle. Unfortunately the New York Times spent an entire trend piece on the bogus idea of "death by blogging." But Gizmodo editor Brian Lam tells me, "Only bogus to lazy bloggers. I did 75 hours this week and anyone over fifty would die doing that."


5. Ebay

At risk: The already dead
Case 1: Seung-Hui Cho bought empty clips and holsters on Ebay before his Virginia Tech rampage. He got his guns and ammo elsewhere, though Ebay notes that the sale of ammunition on Ebay is legal.
Case 2: Ebay's death profits tend to come from the memorabilia. Celebrity deaths bring predictable results, like sales of Pope tchotchkes and autographed Heath Ledger posters. But Ebay has also hosted auctions for supposed Columbia shuttle pieces, video of insurgents shooting down planes in Iraq, the car used in a murder, and O.J. Simpson's book.


4. Drugs

At risk: Druggies
Case 1: Internet drug sales are ridiculously easy (see "spam" above), so easy that every decent men's magazine did an "I ordered Viagra off the Internet" story by 2005. But that means irresponsible doctors can prescribe dangerous drugs, such as this 2002 case of deadly drugs sold online, or this case of a doctor whose patients sometimes became addicted or were hospitalized, or a 2007 case where a 57-year-old Canadian woman died after taking an illegal sedative she ordered online.


3. Webcams

At risk: Suicides
Case 1: Webcam suicide is one of the darkest modern phenomena, an example of loneliness and despair in a supposed age of connection and hope. Those who have fallen that far and recovered may want to forget it ever happened. Webcammer Stacy Pershall has long insisted that despite reports, she did not try to kill herself on camera in 2001 by overdosing on pills but merely took some Advil "to get a few hours sleep" — on her bathroom floor.
Case 2: While Pershall's viewers worried about her and called the cops to save her, those watching Brandon Vedas in 2003 egged him on. He OD'd on five drugs and died a room away from his unsuspecting mother.
Case 3: A father named Kevin Whitrick hanged himself after the apparent encouragement of people watching his webcam; viewers later said they thought it was a joke, and indeed they'd acted worried after seeing him die. After all, he was in an insult chat room, which brings us to another cause of death:


2. Chat rooms

At risk: Hopeless romantics
Case 1: A man rejected in real life by his chat room lover in 1999 cut his own head off with a chainsaw in her front yard. Enough said.
Case 2: Plenty of innocents have been killed by online predators like the man who killed an altar girl, the Texas A&M killer, and this guy in a rural North Carolina trailer.


1. World of Warcraft

At risk: 10 million players, particularly the already crazy ones
Case 1: World of Warcraft addiction may not necessarily be deadly for the player, but it can be hell on their family life. Of course, Kim Trenor was probably crazy long before she moved cross-country with her 2-year-old to see a guy she met on the game, and definitely before she and Royce Zeigler beat "Baby Grace" to death. But if it weren't for that damned game she never would have met the allegedly abusive Zeigler.
Case 2: WoW isn't the first game to drive addicts mad. At least one Everquest player allegedly shot herself after getting hooked on the game.
Case 3: And of course any time you put a beautiful bit of fantasy in the world, some kid will try to imitate it. Happened with Superman, happened with WoW when a Chinese boy jumped off a 24-story building. His parents sued game maker Blizzard saying he was imitating the game, in which some players like to platform-jump, an activity totally unrelated to actually playing. Again, totally not WoW's fault, but something had to convince that boy he could leap off a tower.