Created
Jul 17
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When I first uh, stumbled upon, StumbleUpon, I was ecstatic: "Finally!", I thought, "the Internet is fully realizing its potential". An intelligent system that, given my tastes, will determine and discover useful and interesting sites. However, I didn't realize that the system simply doesn't work.
SU's website states: "Everything is tailored to your interests. We use your ratings, along with the ratings of millions of other members, to determine which sites are best for you". Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, as the bitchy English lady said, YOU are the weakest link.
FIrst of all, what about that small qualifier? You know, the little thing about considering the ratings of MILLIONS OF OTHER MEMBERS? If I cared about what the majority wanted I wouldn't be interested in a system supposedly "tailored to my interests". Sorry if it sounds snobbish but the majority are idiots. They don't know much, but even they know that. That's why no-one admits to watching American Idol (vacuous timewaste promoting empty commercialism - hey, remember when we were all surprised that Susan Boyle could sing well but we did not find her appearance attractive? Does not compute! Does not compute!), listening to Britney Spears (vapid, commercial swill), eating McDonald's (sugar, salt, and oil shaped like food), and voting for George Bush (widely considered to be an idiot and/or the worst president ever, yet voted into office. TWICE). These things are the result of majority opinion. Enjoy it, but I'm not interested. Yet, SU sends it to me daily. Ultimately, it's SU''s "collaborative filtering" that is its downfall: it depends on what the masses like, so if enough stupid people click thumbs-up on some juvenile timewaste, it's sent to the rest of us. The old "funny email"/ "cute cat picture" / "chain letter" that your grandmother or hated co-worker used to send you has morphed into a web page. Kurt Kobain sang "I wish I was like you. Easily amused." I understand how he felt, as every time I click the SU button it's like a deadly game of Russian roulette. I've died a thousand times. I don't wish I was like you, though.
Secondly, the system doesn't "use my ratings". Quite a few times I've thumbed down or reviewed a site only to have it be re-suggested to me. SU's miraculous system appears not to remember whether I have even visited the site prior. Further, if I thumb it down, I'm given three vague, overlapping choices about my reason for doing so, none of which seem to be effective. The situation is worsened by the repetitive content such as endless "All your base"-type "memes that, despite their short shelf-life, proliferate on SU like a disease. Then there's the guys who steal other sites content and give themselves a virtual pat on the back by thumbing the mess up and submitting it to SU. Again. Sometimes, they scrawl some text across the "borrowed" picture in a half-hearted attempt to be creative. Apparently, these are called "demotivators". An unhealthy cross-breed of these two abortions is when a particularly uninspired person "borrows" a picture and simply writes one word ("fail") across it. The beloved majority apparently finds this quite funny as it pops up often. Which leads me to...
Third: The poor content. Of course, SU isn't directly responsible for the content, but their faulty system is responsible for suggesting it. The internet is the greatest repository of information the world has ever known. SU is a system supposedly designed to bring us the best of this repository at the click of a button. Yet, we are consistently faced with one-panel cartoons, a caption-less picture, "cute" baby/cat videos as well as, looking into the true heart of these people, mean-spirited videos of folks choking, getting hurt, and even dying (all labeled as "humor").
