Colbert Study: Conservatives Don't Know He's Joking

Today's Digg leader is an article from the left-wing Huffington Post about Comedy Central superstar Stephen Colbert. The article highlights an Ohio State study which concluded that conservatives don't understand Colbert's humor. Here's why it works:

1) Colbert: As we've established, Digg is populated primarily by young liberals; and young liberals love Stephen Colbert. (Mainly because young liberals hate Bill O'Reilly, and Colbert is the anti-O'Reilly.) The study in the article concludes favorably for fans of Colbert -- basically that conservatives just aren't smart enough to "get" Colbert. If the study hadn't concluded favorably for Colbert, surely the article would not have reached as high up on Digg.

2) Brevity: The study featured in the article was scientific, academic, and well-documented. This means that the article writer could have flooded his post with text and data to support the conclusion. However, he didn't do that; instead, the article is succinct and easy-to-read. It works much better that way for Digg.

Pirate Bay IP Addresses Assigned to Prosecution Lawyers

Today's Digg leader is a blog post concerning some strange activity going on in relation to the Pirate Bay trial. (Pirate Bay, by the way, is the world's largest online directory of free, downloadable copyrighted material. The founders were recently sentenced to one-year jailtime for copyright infringement. The decision has generated much internet buzz.) Here's why it works:

1) Advocacy against private-property: For some strange reason, people all over the internet are coming to the defense of the Pirate Bay. Why is this? The Pirate Bay traffics in stolen digital material; material that has been copied and reproduced without the creator's permission. To defend such a practice is to defend theft in general; or, in other terms, to advocate that no one has the right to own anything. Such a mentality could only be popular in highly liberal, statist groups that believe people have a "right" to public-property.

2) Refer to #1: I can't find any other reason why this blog post has risen so high on Digg. It's not particularly easy to read, it's not funny, and it's not a picture (the post contains a picture, but it's not the focal point of the article). My conclusion is that there must be a large group of Pirate Bay supporters on Digg.

Just a Whole Bucket of Cute!

Today's Digg leader is a blog post about a picture of small dog with his foot stuck in an empty roll of toilet paper. Check out the picture below:

Here's why it works:

1) Cuteness: For whatever reason, people don't tire of looking at cute or funny pictures of domesticated animals. Not only do they work well around the internet -- just look at the success of I Can Has Cheezburger? -- but they work well on Digg. Of course, cuteness is a subjective measure, but as long as you stick with small dogs and cats you should be okay.

2) Picture: This seems to be the most frequently cited reason for success of a story on Digg. It's because pictures convey a lot of information in an extremely short period of time (relative to a textual description of a picture). Digg users, like all other Internet users, have very short attention spans, and are probably viewing dozens of pages in one sitting. This means you need to grab their attention and convey as much information as possible to convince them to Digg your story -- a function that the use of pictures works very well for.

Digg frontpage after marijuana legalization [Pic]

I have pointed out frequently in the past that most Digg users are young, idealistic liberals. While it's hard to prove any claim about Digg users, as such studies have never been undertaken, today's Digg leader might just be as close to a proof as we're ever going to get: It's an image showing the Digg front page after marijuana becomes legal. Here's why it works:

1) Advocacy for marijuana: Whether it's for legalization or just about smoking it in general, articles about marijuana do very well on Digg. Use this to your advantage, even if you disagree. (How? I don't know.)

2) Comedy: The article is not a serious, complex opinion piece about marijuana. Instead, it's a lighthearted image highlighting some of the most humorous effects of legalizing marijuana. It's not meant to be taken seriously; it's meant to arouse a few chuckles from the marijuana-smoking crowd.

3) Easy to read: The article contains news stories that include a title and a description, both no longer than one sentence. It's very easy to scan the article, read the content, and move on. Brevity and readability are two strong components of articles that work well for Digg.

Vermont Legalizes Gay Marriage, Overrides Governor's Veto

Today's Digg leader is an article from the left-wing Huffington Post about Vermont's decision to legalize gay marriage. Here's why it works:

1) Good news for liberals: Most Digg users are liberal. For proof, simply do a search for the term "Sarah Palin" on Digg.com. You'll find a whole page of negative articles about Sarah Palin. Now try the term "Barack Obama." The results are much different. So if you want your story to rise on Digg, make sure liberals like it. Support for gay marriage is, of course, part of the current liberal agenda, which is why good news about gay marriage means a good response from Diggers.

2) Approved source: The Huffington Post is not a straight news outlet like CNN or FOX News; it's a website for liberal-only news and commentary. This means that it's probably populated by the same users that populate Digg. Every news outlet covered the Vermont gay marriage story, yet it was only the Huffington Post's coverage that made the top of Digg. This is because Digg users support sites they approve by Digging articles coming from those sites.

BREAKING: Warner Bros. Acquires The Pirate Bay

Today's Digg leader is an article containing news that Warner Bros. has purchased The Pirate Bay, the world's largest Torrent tracker. Torrents, for the layman, is a digital method to share files, from Word documents to songs to movies to video games. They are widely used for sharing copyrighted material, making the Warner Bros. announcement a surprising one indeed. Here's why the article works:

1) An assault on web "freedom": There is a large contingency of web users who feel they have the right to share all data they please, whether or not the data is copyrighted. They were the ones who fought Metallica when Metallica fought Napster; they are the ones using sites like The Pirate Bay and Mininova that traffic in illegal material. When the government or big business removes their "right" to copyrighted material, they do their best to make a big deal out of the issue. In the case, the big deal was Digging the article as many times as possible.

2) Believable April Fool's joke: Unfortunately (or fortunately?), the article is an April Fool's hoax, meaning it is entirely untrue. However, it was presented as a real piece of news and the web site it comes from gives no evidence that the article is fake. (Except for the users that caught on and left comments.) Apparently Diggers respond well to a good April Fool's hoax. Too bad that only works one day out of the year.

Did You Know? It Will Blow Your Mind.

Today's Digg leader is a four minute, fifty-five second long YouTube video about interesting statistics that reflect a changing, globalized age. It doesn't sound like something that would be at the top of Digg; yet it is. The video is embedded below:



Here's why it works:

1) Excellent presentation: The video is nothing more than a vehicle to present certain statistics. Yes, the statistics are fascinating, but if they were presented as plain text in a relatively unexciting web page, Digg users would have passed right over it. The video is visually stimulating, giving the eye something to focus on every four or five seconds. It's also audibly stimulating, featuring a song that matches the theme of the presentation. Only because those two elements work together does the overall video work as well.

2) Fascinating information: Generally, as most scientists and math-based people are aware of, statistics are pointless, and can be twisted and distorted to convey almost any point the twister/distorter wishes to convey. However, this property of statistics makes them highly effective at evoking emotion, which masses of people will respond to. The statistics that the authors of the video used provoke a mind-boggling, somewhat-pessimistic/somewhat-optomistic emotion. Whatever the emotion was exactly, it worked well for Digg.

Finally Found Him!!

Today's Digg leader comes in the form of a specific location on Google Maps where Waldo, from the Where's Waldo? series, can be found. I've spared you the suspense and provided you with a screenshot from the map below. Here's why it works:


1) Comedy: Funny things work extremely well on Digg. It's in the nature of jokes to pass them on, or retell the joke, and the same is true for online jokes. How better to retell a joke than to Digg it, or email it to a friend? Besides, most people that use Digg are simply browsing to find interesting stories; they're not going to sit and read a thousand-page treatise on, say, economics. Keep it funny, keep it pithy.

2) Childhood reference: Remember, most Digg users are twenty/early thirty-somethings. This means references to child trends in the 80s/early 90s will bring back feelings of nostalgia and delight, and hopefully provoke a reaction like, "Oh, snap: I remember that!" References to Waldo accomplish just that. So do references to He-Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, GI Joe, etc.

Obama To Overturn Major Bush-Era Marijuana Ruling

Today's Digg leader signals the discovery of a new motif: marijuana advocacy. It comes in the form of an article from NationalJournal.com concerning President Obama overturning orders stemming from the Bush administration. Here's why it works:

1) Obama idolatry: In the eyes of most Diggers (remember, we're talking about predominantly white, San Francisco-based, tech-savvy men), Obama can do no wrong; therefore, any article expressing the same sentiment is likely to do well on Digg. The article presents wonderful Obama words without any sort of accompanying criticism; e.g., Obama said, "The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions. Public officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions." Hey, that sounds nice -- would he apply the same mindset to evidence against man-made climate change? This writer thinks not.

2) Marijuana advocacy: The gist of the article is that marijuana is good and many public officials feel the same way. That's great news if you're in favor of legalizing marijuana, and in our case most Diggers want marijuana legalized, so it's no surprise this article was Dugg so many times.

Virginity rates among students by major

Today's Digg leader is a "study" of the correlation between the percentage of virgins and their college major at Wellesley College. I hesitate to proclaim this a true study, because there is literally zero supporting data presented on the page (e.g., sample size, author, etc.). At any rate, the Diggers love it, and the resulting graph is below, followed by why it works.1) Sex: Sex sells; everyone knows this. More importantly though, when it comes to Digg, sex sells if and only if it's about women. Remember, the main Digg demographic is nerdy white college-age men. They don't care about the newest cute picture of David Beckham. But show them a study of the "easiest" girls at school sorted by major, and they're gonna be sending it all the brothers at their fraternity.

2) College: Most people's first impression when they hear the word "college" is not books and studying, but beer and partying. Because beer and partying is exciting, college is exciting; people like to pass on exciting information; because college is exciting, people want to pass on information about it. You follow?