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Someone on a mailing list I’m on asked the list to come up with predictions for 2011. Here are mine:

1. The Atlantic runs a cover story showing that the entire Cognitive Surplus (as per Clay Shirky) created by the Net has been squandered by a massive increase in masturbation.

2. Arrival of Forbin Project/Skynet comes one step closer when airport X-ray scanners are discovered to have spontaneously reinvented ChatRoulette for themselves. (Bonus prediction: 2b. At least one Republican Senator and/or Televangelist is “outed” when he is recorded telling a TSA employee “I think you missed a spot.”)

3. AOL wakes up, feels its long beard, and is “wondrous amazed” at all that has changed in the past ten years.

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Scott Porad from the Cheezburger Network, a network of humor and entertainment Web sites, including I can Has Cheezburger. Memebase, The Daily What, and Failblog.

It’s mainly user-moderated. As an example, Scott takes us through the steps for the Cheezburger site.

First, the home tab where you can submit content. The LOL builder makes it easy for users to add captions to images. They get 300,000-500,000 submissions to their network every month, but they only publish 1-2 percent. How do they cull? There’s no secret sauce, no magic algorithms. It’s a four-step human process.

Step 1: All submissions are screened by an editor, looking for image quality (not taken on a cellphone at night, etc.), appropriateness (no nudity, violence, racism), germaneness (a dog photo submitted to the cat site?), and keeping photos of humans out. Most of what gets submitted is junk, and gets screened out.

Step 2: Using the second tab, users vote or add a submission to their favorites. They also look at which content has been shared on social networks.

Step 3: User screening for offensiveness and copyright violations.

Step 4: Editorial curation.

They tried outsourcing it, but there’s too much specific to our culture, and requires too much editorial judgment.

Scott shows us his the favorite photos in his own account profile. ([Some very funny ones.]

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My daughter pointed out Nietzsche Family Circus, that pairs up the adorable comics with quotes from the ever more adorable Nietzsche.

That reminded me of some long, hilarious strings of reviews of Family Circus books at Amazon. So, I looked up an issue of my old newsletter (which I think I’m actually going to publish an issue of soon) where I mentioned them. They’re still there (here and here) and some are pretty funny, but I’m pretty sure Amazon cleaned up the list — it’s way shorter and tamer than I remember.

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Election Day + 1, 2010

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Amusing Dilbert today, for those who can’t resist a good taxonomy joke. (Thanks for the tip, Helena!)

[Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous comics dilbert humor taxonomy ]

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TheOnion has been bought by a Chinese fish company. Hilarious. (Be sure to click on the op-ed titled “The Internet Allows for a Free Exchange of Unmitigated Information.”)

[Tags: theonion the_onion onion humor china free_internet free_speech freedom ]

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Emil Sotirov in a comment points to this photo, in Wikipedia’s Wax Tablet article:

[Tags: wax_tablets greek humor ]

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Putting on her old red campaigning suit caused an unstoppable urge to call a press conference, and, well, she had to announce something.

Part of careful plan to capture the White House in 2012 by convincing Americans that she’s the leading incoherent, out of control Republican.

She can see crazy from her backyard.

That’ll show the world McCain made a great choice in picking her!

Only way to exorcise those chain-rattling Ghosts of Machine-Gunned Moose Past.

Bridge to Nowhere, meet Leaper.

Michael Jackson so needed to be knocked out of first place on Twitter.

You don’t understand? Just wait for Mark Sanford’s next press conference.

Face it: Alaska’s a dump. [Hey, these are her reasons, not mine!]

Desperate bid to be mocked by Tina Fey one last time.

[Tags: palin humor ]

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Yup. Pretty damn creepy.

[Tags: cluetrain advertising ]

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