Earthling Concerned

The Colbert Effect August 11, 2006

Update (16-Aug-06): Stephen Colbert made more references to his web savvy fans (I would imagine that this is nearly everyone by now). Another call was made to vote for the Stephen Colbert Bridge and this time around, it seems like the servers are holding and votes are going through. I predict victory within 24 hours providing the site doesn’t go down yet again. Check out the current results here. As of now, it seems to be going up at around 1000 Colbert votes every few minutes. I suspect Comedy Central paid for some Hungarian bandwidth to that the experiment can continue. On a side note, if you look up “perl-script“, you’ll find nearly a million votes. This is the far more intriguing story but I probably won’t mention it beyond these few words here. Next up on the agenda, Colbert called onto his fans to rename the mascot of the Saginaw Spirit Hockey team, as a similar vote is taking place. I did notice that during the credits, the Comedy Central MotherLoad Video site was advertised for the first time in a while. This may be a way to fight off the several Youtube videos (see article below), but, maybe I’m just overanalyzing this whole situation like I have been since my first two articles! Beyond this, there is nothing for me to report except that the Samuel L. Jackson interview on the Daily Show was sweeeeeet. Snakes on a mother fuckin’ plane Comes out Friday!

I’ve written two articles (I and II) on Wikipedia and Colbert in the last week and a half and promise to you that this will be the final chapter of my Colbert Report discussion. Pt. III of the trilogy if you will. But there have been some interesting developments since then so here I am yet again. Since the last article, Wikipedia has been brought up briefly by interviewee Wes Boyd, co-creator of Moveon.org (who themselves have a youtube satire about Colbert) and those flying toasters you may have seen on your desktop circa 1994. The brief mention was simply another comment on some false statistics Colbert claimed were true and it didn’t even cause the slightest ripple on the Internet. But Wikipedia on Colbert was so last week. His most recent call on his legions of fans came a few nights ago during his “Tip of the Hat, Wag of the Finger”. It was during this segment that he discussed how an Internet poll was being used to decide the name of a Hungarian bridge that is being built over the Danube. The task at hand was simple, go to the website of the bridge and name the bridge “The Stephen Colbert Bridge”. Shortly after the announcement, the site was overloaded with traffic (as one would imagine) and was no longer accessible. So there you go, Colbert is at it again, the pop culture of Stephen Colbert continues. How much power does this one man have? How large is his army?

I wouldn’t go so far as agreeing with Geraldo on this one, but the power Colbert yields depends more on other information channels than just his show. Flooding a website with traffic is nothing new. The Slashdot or DIGG effect has run several servers to the ground over the last few years. Several times a day to be honest. So what of the Colbert Effect? His Wikiality comments tested the dedication to some of the editors on Wikipedia, but the Colbert Effect died after a few days. The lock on the elephant page has been removed (you still have to have an account) and every sign of a lock on the Latchkey Kids article has been completely removed. Wikipedia isn’t the big bully censor after all. As for “The Stephen Colbert Bridge”, the voting site is still overwhelmed and nearly impossible to reach after two days but that doesn’t mean Colbert has really accomplished anything. Firstly, there’s no reason for a site like that to expect all that many daily visitors, a slight infusion of random traffic will take down the majority of the websites on the Internet. Secondly, according to a comment regarding the Bridge on the No Fact Zone, Colbert had a total of 2187 votes. That pales in comparison to the 156741 votes Chuck Norris already has (who is a distant second to the leader, Zenebutik-Zenehíd which has 260730). Sorry to say, what Colbert has achieved is simply a matter of hype for his television show.

Only hype? I guess that’s the point of television. But it seems to me that this constant call on his fans (who, like myself, are probably sitting at their computer while the show is aired) has undesired consequences as well. Youtube is filling up with more and more clips after every episode (1,2,3,4,5 clips from yesterdays show alone). These clips, of course, are commercial free. Social networking sites like Digg.com send a great amount of traffic to these videos. So what may be happening, is that Colbert’s popularity will go up, but not because there are more viewers watching the show on its intended medium (television). It appears that the Colbert Effect doesn’t stand a chance on its own. It relies too heavily on the web, which can assimilate the shows content and claim it as its own, to make a difference. But I suppose that’s the way things have been going for the last several years, television is losing its power every day. Parents of the world rejoice!

Colbert’s Wikiality (Part Deux) August 3, 2006

Fresh off of writing an article on the Pop Culture of Wikipedia a few nights ago (Monday), I tuned into the Colbert Report and realized he was initiating his own type of popular influence onto the site. With his next to next to latest, “The WØRD”, he defined another word that will surely make as many headlines as last year’s “truthiness”:

Wikiality: the method of making something up, but getting enough people to agree with you so it becomes reality.

He went on to suggest to his loyal viewers that they should create a new truth on the status of elephants by editing the article on the animal to state that the elephant population has tripled in the last six months. Subsequently, throughout the next 24 hours, fans of the show edited the articles on Elephants, The Colbert Report, George Washington, Truthiness, Oregon, Bears (his arch nemesis on the show) and even the Wikipedia entry itself. Some of these pages have subsequently been locked to further edits by anonymous users and in some cases, by all users. To me, doing this makes sense, this has been done throughout the history of Wikipedia. Whenever controversy, or at least large scale vandalism occurs, the sites get blocked from further edits. George W. Bush has been blocked on and off throughout the last few years of his term. Israel has also recently made it on the list due to the current middle eastern conflict. It’s nothing new and barely anything that should bring ruin to the five pillars of Wikipedia. That, of course doesn’t mean Colbert would leave things alone after the first night!

On the 2nd of August, two nights after introducing the world to “Wikiality”, Mr. Colbert, in an effort to fill the time after his supposed guest Joe Lieberman (“Showless Joe”) failed to show (he started the interview into an empty chair), he decided to accept viewer phone calls. The third caller, A very sarcastic Maurice K. (from Beltsander, California) described his displeasure over the blocked access to the elephant page. His nasally, whiny voice may well have defined the new stereo-type for a Wikipedia user. Proclaiming that it was “indeed a dark day for the elephant fan community”, and when Colbert allowed him to share with the audience what he was planning on posting, he began, “When fully erect, an adult elephant penis is surprisingly…” before he was cut off by Colbert. During the interview of the actual guest, Linda Hirshman (author of Get to Work: A Manifesto of the Women of the World) got back onto the topic after disagreeing about some facts Colbert had on Latchkey Kids. He replied that he got his info after reading it somewhere, at which point she said, “probably somewhere like on Wikipedia?” He said he knew it was up written there, and she said, “it will be soon.” After this he looked directly into the camera and began with something along these lines, “Edit the Latchkey kids entry on Wikipedia, it is a fact that they become adults who go crazy.” And it sure was, 13 seconds after it was aired, the site was blocked for further edits and the discussion page began in an excited frenzy of thought! So it continues, Colbert keeps Wikipedia on high alert (ha!).

But really, what does this all mean? In the end, it doesn’t mean much more than a pretty funny commentary on Wikipedia. It just brings further light to how the strength of Wikipedia can also, at times, become a weakness. It’s just a little bit more work for a few frustrated editors. Without the current design, It wouldn’t be possible for six and a half million articles to be written on practically everything one can write on (to varying degrees of comprehensiveness (see below)) in several languages in under six years. Moments of large scale vandalism like this are bound to happen once in a while. Blocking further edits to heated topics should not be considered as dangerous censorship to an enlightened and free movement of open thought (please) but minor policing by those who have kept anarchy from taking over all this time. All of these protections are put in place after being discussed on varying levels (be it behind every articles “discussion” tab, or Community Portal and elections for the Board of Trustee are currently being advertised at the top of every single Wikipedia page. So for the forseeable future, the concept of wikiality is something that Wikipedia editors will have to keep an eye out (and considering the pace of the new blocks, it seems like the wikipedia community is watching Colbert closely). And remember, Colbert’s comments on Wikipedia bring attention to him, but also Wikipedia itself. All publicity is good publicity!