The World’s Most Influential Person

By Miss Cellania in Blogs & Internet on Apr 27, 2009 at 2:05 pm

TIME magazine has announced the winner of their World’s Most Influential Person poll.

In a stunning result, the winner of the third annual TIME 100 poll, and new owner of the title world’s most influential person, is Moot. The 21-year-old college student and founder of the online community 4chan.org, whose real name is Christopher Poole, received 16,794,368 votes and an average influence rating of 90 (out of a possible 100) to handily beat the likes of Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Oprah Winfrey. To put the magnitude of the upset in perspective, it’s worth noting that everyone Moot beat out actually has a job.

Link

Tags: poll, time

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Chandrielle
Apr 27th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Way to be on top of the times, TIME.
VonSkippy
Apr 27th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Proving once again that public education is churning out moron after moron.
feeling_madness
Apr 27th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
What? I’ve never even heard of the website, much less the person..
chet
Apr 27th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
See, this is why internet polls are worthless.
eni
Apr 27th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Regardless of whether you’ve heard of moot of 4chan or not, you have probably felt 4chan’s influence. Plenty of the slang used and things referenced in the real world by today’s teenagers originated on 4chan.
Video Game Dork
Apr 27th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
They should probably amend their title to ‘most influential person on teh interwebz’ (‘influential’ in that he did get online votes!)
Chandrielle
Apr 27th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Neatorama – you might want to put a NSFW warning on this in case people who have never heard of 4chan decide to go look for themselves. I’m imaginging a bunch of little old ladies clutching their pearls at the images of goatse, two girls one cup, and kiddie porn flashing on their computers.
zeytoun
Apr 27th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Chandrielle,

Everything Neatorama linked to was SFW. You can’t expect others to warn you of the potential for NSFW findings in your own independent research.

Also, if you actually just read the 4chan homepage, you would have seen that it has an Adult section.
Erik O.
Apr 27th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Yeah, this poll is definitely false.
It’s really entertaining to see the skill of the “Anonymous” hackers skill because they hacked the crap out of this poll.
Read this article and you’ll see:
http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/15/inside-the-precision-hack/
angstrom
Apr 27th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
@feeling_madness
you never heard of 4chan?

here’s a helpful and incredibly accurate fox news piece that will enlighten you

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,512957,00.html
Kalel
Apr 27th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Time’s management says, “I would remind anyone who doubts the results that this is an Internet poll. Doubting the results is kind of the point.”

And the point is therefore Moot.
roon
Apr 27th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
there have been threads on 4chan for a loonng time getting people to vote for moot as many times as possible using a few programs

so yes, it was rigged. although for the internet, moot has had a very large but indirect influence
Johnny Cat
Apr 27th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Look at TIME attempting relevance! How cute!
DaveL
Apr 27th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Colbert gets a space station and Moot gets Time. Enjoy the remaining wild west days of the internet before they put all the fences up.
Robert
Apr 27th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
@DaveL: You sir, are so right.

The fact that 4Chan and Moot are being recognized by TIME proves were all in a gigantic hand-basket headed right to H-E Double hockey sticks.

That being said, this poll was obviously photoshopped.
TXOgre
Apr 27th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
The whole poll was manipulated by hackers, in a very entertaining way. The first letter of the names from the top 21 places in the poll spell out:

MARBLECAKEALSOTHEGAME

This is not a mistake, it was done quite on purpose, and it actually does have meaning, though nothing profound (unless you find The Game profound).

It’s attributed to “the group” Anonymous…which really isn’t a group or organization of any kind. It’s kind of chaotic, and completely decentralized. It’s funny how the media can never quite get a grasp on this…it’s just how the “underground” here on the internet works. No one is in charge, and there aren’t really any leaders or followers, and there’s no real prize in the end…it’s all for laughs.

In any case, I find the whole ordeal very entertaining. It’s very easy to manipulate online poll results in most cases, but in this case the ingenuity and skill involved is impressive. A lot of hard work went into manipulating that poll…and all for the lulz!

All of that said, 4chan is pretty influential on the web. Most of the popular memes you see originate or begin spreading from there. A good example is LOLcats, the scourge that they were (are?). Other examples you may have heard of; Caturday, I herd u like Mudkipz, The Rick Roll, Boxxy, these all originated at 4chan…a site which was created by the young gentleman who is now listed as Time’s most influential person.
DaveL
Apr 27th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
The Anonymous vids were spooky when they first came out but lost their edge when we saw what the members looked like IRL protesting Scientology buildings. In short, Hot Topic is not punk rock.

4chan has always had a huge following and is a primary meme farm… but Moot can’t get ad sponsors because of the pron. I wonder if this will finally attract VC’s that’ll prompt Moot to put a shirt and tie on his site.
Chandrielle
Apr 27th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
I didn’t say Neatorama linked to anything NSFW, I said if someone decided to go check the actual site out they should be forwarned.
c0ldfish
Apr 27th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
m00t_for_the_win

you_can’t_expect_anybody_else_to_outvote_/b/tards

when_the_voting_is_done_online

and_we’re_all_”super_hackers”

epic_obligatory_lulz
Thomas
Apr 27th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
My God. Epic. I knew moot’s appearance at number one was no accident, but I didn’t even realize the other twenty until just now. I am impressed.
PotatoCouch
Apr 27th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Of course Moot isn’t the world’s most influential person but everyone who is butthurt about the sanctity of a magazine publication list needs to relax.
Kalel
Apr 27th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
“Enjoy the remaining wild west days of the internet before they put all the fences up.” — DaveL

I couldn’t have said it better.
lucky
Apr 27th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
sometimes /b/tards are great…if only to make me laugh
Splint Chesthair
Apr 28th, 2009 at 7:57 am
If you’ve never been to 4chan, do yourself a favor and don’t go. What has been seen cannot be unseen. 4chan is the meth/heroin of the internet. There are no weekend warriors!
Moot Point
Apr 30th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Point Moot
Sunny
Apr 30th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
@Kalel

Well, I snickered anyway.

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