Blue_Sargasso
Student
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2008
- Messages
- 26
The many highly intelligent skeptics on this site have been itching to participate in a bona fide conspiracy – one that is entirely verifiable – and now their chance has come. Nothing too demanding, nothing too dangerous, nothing illegal…striking a blow on behalf of smart people everywhere.
There’s a dreadful website called “Authonomy”, run by Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins publishing conglomerate (the leviathan that produces so much of the trash that litters the bookshelves of our nations). The aim of Authonomy is to use the technique of “crowdsourcing” to find new writing talent. In practice, it amounts to desperate wannabe writers begging other writers to vote for them in the most shameless and degrading way. Each month, five books get ‘elected’ by the Authonomy community and are presented to HarperCollins’ editors for consideration for publication. The whole thing is ghastly – like the X-factor for novelists. A group of us are hoping to discredit this dreadful site, so we’ve nominated five obscure novels on the site that we want to ramp into the top five to show how pathetic the system is.
Do you want to help out with this small-scale, symbolic attack on the Murdoch media empire? It’s no more than a gesture against the cynical greed machine, but it’s a start. Just think of the warm feeling you will get from becoming an official conspirator.
All you have to do is log on to www.authonomy.com. You just need to give an email address, a password and a username. You don't need to fill in any other details. Do a search on 1) "Trashland”, 2) “Bling" (The Last Bling King), 3) "Jacuzzi" (Jacuzzi Sans Frontieres), 4) “Euphoria” and 5) “Pendulum” (The Pendulum and the Fog). Vote for all five books that you find via these searches by choosing the "back the book icon". That’s it. Finito. Then sit back and watch if our conspiracy works. We’ll know by the end of the month if the game has worked.
Can skeptics unite and change things? This is a small-scale test of that principle. I doubt it will succeed since there's way too much cynicism, apathy and inaction on here, but you never know.
Long live the revolution (as they say somewhere).
There’s a dreadful website called “Authonomy”, run by Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins publishing conglomerate (the leviathan that produces so much of the trash that litters the bookshelves of our nations). The aim of Authonomy is to use the technique of “crowdsourcing” to find new writing talent. In practice, it amounts to desperate wannabe writers begging other writers to vote for them in the most shameless and degrading way. Each month, five books get ‘elected’ by the Authonomy community and are presented to HarperCollins’ editors for consideration for publication. The whole thing is ghastly – like the X-factor for novelists. A group of us are hoping to discredit this dreadful site, so we’ve nominated five obscure novels on the site that we want to ramp into the top five to show how pathetic the system is.
Do you want to help out with this small-scale, symbolic attack on the Murdoch media empire? It’s no more than a gesture against the cynical greed machine, but it’s a start. Just think of the warm feeling you will get from becoming an official conspirator.
All you have to do is log on to www.authonomy.com. You just need to give an email address, a password and a username. You don't need to fill in any other details. Do a search on 1) "Trashland”, 2) “Bling" (The Last Bling King), 3) "Jacuzzi" (Jacuzzi Sans Frontieres), 4) “Euphoria” and 5) “Pendulum” (The Pendulum and the Fog). Vote for all five books that you find via these searches by choosing the "back the book icon". That’s it. Finito. Then sit back and watch if our conspiracy works. We’ll know by the end of the month if the game has worked.
Can skeptics unite and change things? This is a small-scale test of that principle. I doubt it will succeed since there's way too much cynicism, apathy and inaction on here, but you never know.
Long live the revolution (as they say somewhere).
