Pretending to game the system: Fans hoax "Girlfriend" vid to the #1 spot on YouTube. | Hacker News Reader

Pretending to game the system: Fans hoax "Girlfriend" vid to the #1 spot on YouTube.

voltagecreative.com

89 pointswmeredith31 comments

I have to admit, I never thought the day would come that I would think "Wow, that Avril Lavigne fansite sure had some good strategy."

No kidding. Great reality hack.

Just goes to show the power of a truly viral campaign

This reminds me of my third most favourite MIT hack:

In 1998, Bill Clinton gave MIT's commencement address.

The MIT administration discovered that a rather embarrassing hack was planned. To forestall it, a few days before commencement, a sternly worded message was emailed around:

Any students who appear at the commencement exercises wearing a black beret, a blue dress, kneepads, or any combination thereof will be denied entrance.

Needless to say, the hack itself was never intended to be performed.

Who were they trying to get excluded from the commencement?

Monica Lewinsky

This sentence no verb.

Funny how a comment goes down when the context changes. Calm down with the hate.

What did you mean?

The post initially contained a sentence or two with no verbs, which made the post rather hard to understand. My comment was a gentle request for clarification and a nod to Hofstadter / self reference. While the post contained the error, it got upvoted to about 4. After the error was fixed, my comment was as low as -4 (because at that point it made no sense). Hence the "chill with the hate" comment.

Those tech journalists that wrote those stories didn't even check out how youtube deals with these things... How obscenely lazy can you be?

They're not lazy, they're looking for a good story. It's good business to spin a mundane story as sensational news. They're after the same thing as Avril Lavigne, views.

As people generating entertainment for their readers, you're right. It was a good story. But, as "journalist" they, in my opinion, are lazy. They failed to fully research the issue and present it as clearly as possible.

If by 'journalist' you mean someone who how a vocation of providing the public with important news and information, you for have a fundamental misunderstanding of the modern news-media. True journalists, I'm afraid, are few and far between. Muckracking is a far more profitable occupation, both in terms of finance and popularity. It's why idiots with voting power are a better filter than your standard copy-editor. Money and power are self reinforcing pursuits; truth and integrity are not.

</pessimism>

On the plus side: once you realize how the system works, you are free to game it to get your message across. It becomes amazing the kind of stunts you can perform.

This effect should have a name- it would kill me if someone called it the Girlfriend Effect.

A) Hack (that fakes A). B) As media cries foul, the media causes A to happen. C) Echo chamber as bloggers find out the real story, which adds to A (not necessary, this just adds to the effect).

It's not the Streisand Effect because there is no attempt to ban, it's that the media exposure causes the hoax to become real. So, I'm sure there is a ghost story/supernatural/Greek myth parallel somewhere.

The wolf cry that attracted the wolf?

I think that's called a "self-fulfilling prophecy".

honestly, i didn't think the day would come that i would be so impressed by the ingenuity of the avril lavigne fan club in relation to viral marketing. kudos.

Horrible song. And why does every pop song have voice resampling these days?

I suspect the answer is similar to the same reason everything is compressed about as much as possible.

It's aural MSG.

Would that I had but more than one upvote to give...

"Would that I had..." is better. Regardless, I wasn't thrilled, so I tossed a point their way for you!

fixed

Since I don't really listen to pop, what are you meaning by 'voice resampling', and what does it do for/to the song?

It's "auto tune". The original idea was to correct mistakes, but it's now used as an effect, specifically the "cher effect". It's not too excessive in the above song, but it's still pretty bad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Believe_(Cher_song)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bTREzJL83A

It was extremely unfortunate how that (kind of) effect became a trend in soulless mainstream music for many years to come.

A similar effect was used extensively on Blackstreet's album "Another Level", where it caused much less harm (being more restrained).

I heard a clip of the new girl from that 'reality' show the Hills and it sounded like the resampling was the whole voice.

They have been doing it for years...they are just way more obvious about it now. Yes, I am ashamed of the above statement.

When your competition consists of a big online jukebox containing free copies of every pop song ever recorded, it pays to encourage a popular taste for sounds that have never been recorded before.

I can't believe I let myself get tricked into watching that stupid video. Do the people who say the song is catchy, entertaining, et cetera, actually hear the lyrics? Are they just that devoid of an ear for quality, that they can't tell the lyrics are not only typical bland pop music fare, but actually more poorly composed than the usual by a wide margin? Can they not hear the droning repetitiveness of the instrumental "melody"?

No wonder I don't like listening to the radio. . . .

Interesting strategy, but Girlfriend came out 18 months ago. That post reviews the song and the song as if they're something new.

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