We've reached Critical Mass

So, I was gonna come home and tell you all about the cool sinus-lift and implant placement I watched this morning, or about going swimming at one of the city pools until my legs cramped up and then watching classmates play "sloshball" in the field right next to the pool (kickball where all players must play with an open can of beer in one hand) as part of the opening social to the kickball league they joined, or the most incredibly amazing sunset I stopped to watch on the way home (seriously, it was the most amazing sunset I've ever seen). But all that seems trite compared to what I just witnessed taking place on the internets.

Digg.com is a website where people vote on various internet things: Videos, news, pictures, stories, etc. Stuff that's getting lots of diggs moves up to the top of the list and ends up on the front page of Digg.com. It's got all sorts of weirdness and is probably one of the nerdiest, geekiest, funniest, meanest, mobocracies ever invented. It gets pretty crazy and might just well be a solid representation of who's actually out here on the internet the most and what they're doing.

One of the best things about it is that people can comment on the stories and even the comments can get diggs, up or down. There's a strong set of unspoken social rules that fall into place on sites like this and although I understand them enough to get what's going on, I usually keep my comments to myself cuz, I'm just not that funny and can't really contribute to the conversation well enough, but it sure is a blast to watch.

Tonight, someone put up a picture of a car that has the license plate "9 Diggs" on it and who ever posted it encouraged the crowd that this guy should get more than just 9 diggs (to get on the front page often requires several hundred to a few thousand). Good comments at the top of the comment list often hit 2-300 diggs. If it's a REALLY good pun on the story or something super appropriate, I've seen over a thousand diggs on the comment.

Tonight was the strangest anomaly I've ever seen. The picture has gotten over 4,500 diggs, but somehow, every comment got dugg up to 9. exactly. Someone started a trend, and everyone else hopped onto it. There's over 800 comments (typical is 50-100) and for a little bit, the first 60 had exactly 9 diggs and all the replies had 9 diggs, and all the replies to the replies had 9 diggs. Except for one guy who randomly said something and someone replied that he should get -9 diggs, then all of a sudden he had a lot more than -9, then someone suggested he should get -999 and everyone started working towards that and when I saw it he had -1016 and I'm sure there were a hundred people out there digging him up and down to get to -999.

The amazing thing to all this isn't the 9 diggs, but the fact that this mob, with no leadership, no organization, full of geeky anarchists and social deviants, managed to pull off this stunt without any real initiative, push, or direction. It just HAPPENED. And it wasn't perfect, some joker starts trying to throw the whole thing off by putting in his own diggs and then everyone tries to restore it and it has to settle back into "proper" form of uniform 9's. But a form took shape and the majority of the universe stuck with it, apparently randomly. The only loyalty to anything, or force that would accomplish this is a loosely held enjoyment of a good joke.

This is the kind of "spontaneous combustion" stuff that scientists scoff at due to the natural laws of disorder, chaos, and entropy. Now if it turns out there's some mastermind behind the scenes secretly guiding all this, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised, but without any hint at such, we have to assume that this just HAPPENED. I think its fantastically amazing and laughed for 5 minutes straight just seeing how long the joke went on, and on, and on, and on. I've been refreshing the page for 20 minutes just watching this play out and still laugh that it happened.

I guess if you want to laugh too, but don't really find this that funny, I'll just say: You had to be there.

The 9's had made it all the way to the end when I finally got there and threw my 2-bits in except for the last about, 9, or so (actually it was 11) and those were probably just too new to get up there yet. It's like an internets party or something. (I seriously need more of a life, like playing sloshball or something).