Digg Blows

While I can’t take credit for making the lemming analogy I can’t say I disagree either. The cattle herd mentality runs rampant within the digg community. Without it, digg would fail. When I say lemmings or cattle herd, I’m talking - of course - about the fact that what one sacred digg user does the rest must do, blindly, and without fail. If #1DiggUser wants to make a story popular, it must be made popular. Everyone jumps on the band wagon and pushes a story through.

Most famously are the fanboy postings, although they’re not alone. A fanboy - by definition - is a person who is so in love with a person, product, or brand that they damn near ejaculate over any little tidbit of information released about whatever person, product, or brand they’re in love with. Apple is a big one. Everytime someone posts a story entitled something like: “Apple iPhone Physical Dimensions Released (WITH PHOTOS)” or “Jobs on iPhone: I love it”, the fanboys get excited to the point where they…

1. Damn near ejaculate
2. Digg, comment, defend their idols, and destroy those opposed

…both to the point of illness. It’s unsettling that there are people out there like that, but sure enough there are, and Digg thrives on them. Of course, if one fanboy loves “it”, all fanboys will too. It’s the cattle mentality.

While flocking together is all too common and a fucking joke, it’s not the worst behavior of the digg user. The worst demonstration of the digg user is the comments section. For it is in the comments that you discover everything you need to know about the kind of people who religiously use digg. While the lemmings all follow the one ahead of them and leave the “True dat..” or “w00t” type comments, you’ll always find one person who disagrees with the story in question. When this happens, look at the comments that follow. You’ll find the blind, mindless digg users doing the following:

1. Picking out spelling or grammatical erros
2. Chewing up and spitting out the other’s personal beliefs
3. Comment gang rape
4. Bury…bury…bury

It’s as if nobody’s opinion matters unless it’s completely in sync with the general concensus on the comment board. Don’t dare tell the room where you stand on the issue if you oppose, as your comment will never see the light of day. Of course, this is a bullshit feature of digg - a feature which fosters and promotes the growth of this mob mentality. If I gave a shit, I would wish they’d get rid of it.

On some levels you can’t blame these people for being assholes to those with descending opinions. At some degree we all have to realize that digg users basically boil down to a mass-collection of “Miltons” from Office Space. If you’ve never seen the movie, Milton was the guy that nobody respected at all. He got shit on, pushed around, and humiliated at every opportunity. Most digg users are like that in real life I bet. They come to digg and push other people around, because they can’t do it in real life. They get themselves a badass alter-ego, a tough-sounding handle/screen name, and put their geek genius to work by kicking the digital ass instead of the flesh and blood ass. How sad? It’s like the kid who can’t play baseball to save his mother’s life buying the baseball video game and tearing up the online community.

Being a badass online, and a pussy offline doesn’t mean shit because at some point, you have to get up and walk away from the computer, shut down your browser, and be a real person. No matter how much time you spend online, you’ll always be a loser.

Digg users essentially need to get a life. They need give up the lemming mentality and go their own way. Be original, be creative, and be a human. Will that ever happen? Not a fucking chance…unless it’s what’s popular on digg on any given day.

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