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Getting on My WOT? It’s as Easy as 1...2... Hey! Nice Vagina!Dec 21 '02 (Updated Feb 03 '03) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Be naked.
Be oppressed.
Be near me when I'm drunk.
Being as it’s getting to that time of year again, when, harmonic convergence-like, my birthday and the end of the year randomly coincide, I've been spending a good deal of time pondering the important issues of my life and the world. Naturally, this leads me to consider epinions, and my place at the center of it ... my importance, and to a lesser degree, the importance of those who recognize my importance. Naturally, when I had a second to set those thoughts aside, I also thought a little bit about the people who keep sending me letters asking me to maybe recognize their contributions to epinions and add them to my Web of Trust. I’ve grown weary of the barrage of pleas from lesser contributors, who expect they’ll be added eventually if they simply refrain from using emoticons and multiple punctuation marks, avoid living alone with cats, and read and rate (MH) every one of my reviews. I’ve resisted stating explicitly how one gets on my WOT for fear that some would try to “game the system,” which would undermine the integrity of both my methods for doling out favoritism and, less importantly, the integrity of the site as a whole. But as time has passed, I’ve come to realize that the daunting task of getting on my WOT, as evidenced by the staggering ratio of my trusters to trustees, has compelled some to avoid trusting me, because they think there is simply no chance the favor will be returned. While I find this sort of trust-sluttism reprehensible, it’s dawned on me lately that taking the moral high ground on this issue is just not going to help me maintain my power and prestige relative to Beauty Advisors. So I’ve decided to finally let the cat out of the bag. Getting on my WOT is a simple affair, if you just adhere to a few basic tenets. Nearly everyone on my WOT has gotten there by taking one or more of the roads listed below (except for prfstars, who got there by calling me stupid and by sharing my affinity for retards): 1. Send Pictures of Your Dirty Bits It can be tough, doing what I do for a living as a fake lawyer. The hours are long and the employers, more often then not, monitor internet use. So it’s not like I can spend much time perusing the internet porn during the work week. And it’s not like that fact has any effect on my actual need to look at pictures of naked people. I’m a man, and this is what they invented the internet for, dammit. I don’t think my choice of a career should prohibit me from enjoying the same dangly-bit viewing pleasures as my brethren and sistren who chose their careers more wisely. The smart epinions people recognized this early, and knowing that internet spying software doesn’t scan email attachments, began to forward me pictures of their genitals. It started for me, as it did for a lot of people, with hirohito99 mass emailing pictures of him punching himself in the testicles. Those were the good old days on epinions, when testicle-punching was all the rage ... and hirohito was way ahead of the curve. His WOT went through the roof, and if he hadn’t started talking about booger-eating soon after that, he would be king of epinions today. People who were paying attention in those early days took the lesson to heart. Jim Scileppi released pictures of himself in his speedos, and take a look at where his WOT stands now. BadKittyM was showing up nekkid everywhere, with predictable results. Sordid-1 started entire independent websites devoted to images of him f.ucking goats. Nobody really took to that, though. Over time, the public display of mottled flesh petered out, due to misuse of the subjects’ images, and people became a little more surgical in their porn strikes. Used to be, everyone around these parts had at least one picture of Lobstergirl gently stroking Tony Blair’s cascading skullet in the unclad aftermath of another evening of carnal bliss. But after some fool with a picture-editing program removed Tony’s face and replaced it with that of Dr. Phil, a lot of people decided that they just weren’t going to send out identifiable naked pictures of themselves any more. Sure, the WOT dances continued, but mainly they were just close-up gynecological (and, uh, urological) webcam grabs forwarded selectively along with little “How ‘bout you gimme a little trust” notes. No more real names. No more faces. No lengthy discussions. Epinions became the internet equivalent of an Erica Jong novel, and most of us old-timers still engage in rampant “zipless trust” with anyone who still remembers how to play the game. You may not think that’s the way one’s WOT should be built, but it’s done that way, I assure you, by anyone who’s been here since 2000, and a lot of us still agree that it’s a more happy fun-making way to spend your day than trying to find the least bad writer of lipstick reviews. There’s a lot of monkeys around these parts (fezmonkeys, repulsemonkeys, mangiottos), and let me tell you, nothing brightens up a day like a lunchtime email attachment of a pink conical monkey micro-penis. Nothing, that is, short of a nicely composed shot of a stranger’s disembodied vulva, which is why jazzbocrow, prfstars, Lobstergirl, Niccy6, OdellBurgess, JenniferNorth, matochak, st3on1ey1baby, kellydeal and zenhues will always be the mainstays of my WOT. And you could be a mainstay too. All it takes is a Nikkon, a tripod and a timer. 2. Catch me When I’ve Been Drinking If you’re not down with sending me pictures of your sex parts, or you don’t own a digital camera or scanner, there’s still hope, but you’re gonna have to spend some time studying me ... getting to know by patterns ... coming to understand when it is that I’m most likely to be drunk. Fact is, I don’t actually read anything that anyone else writes on epinions. I’m a busy man, and what little time I have to spend on the internet is usually spent re-reading my own stuff. I know I’m funny. I know I’ll offer some valuable insights. And I know that when it’s time to make an actual purchasing decision, there’s nobody whose opinion I trust more than my own, especially when I’ve written about something I already purchased before. So why would I waste valuable time reading through hundreds of reviews by less funny, less intelligent, less well-informed consumers on the off chance that one of them will say something worthy of further attention. No, I stick to reading my own stuff, thank you, and rubber-stamping other peoples’ reviews while I’m on the phone with people I don’t have to pay too much attention to. I don’t even know who most of the people here are, and I haven’t a clue whether any of the people on my WOT are good writers. The vast majority of people on my WOT got there as a simple matter of timing: They got me to actually read their profile page, which had something funny on it, while a was feeling generous due to overconsumption of bourbon. So this is a pretty easy way to get on my WOT: Put something short and pithy, in big red letters, near the top of your profile page, wait till I’ve been drinking, and grab my attention when I’m on site. “But how am I supposed to know when you’re hammered, Eyore?” I can hear you asking. Well, is it night-time? Anywhere? If it is, there’s your answer. “But how am I supposed to know when you’re logged in to epinions, Eyore?” I can hear you asking further. Well, have I posted an epinion lately? If I posted one yesterday, there’s a good chance I’m gonna post another one today, and tomorrow. Because if you’ve been paying attention, you know that I always post these things in bunches (usually right around the time that I have something else really important to do). So if you got an email alert that I posted something yesterday, just log right on to my profile page and keep hitting that refresh button all day until you see that I’ve posted another review. It’ll happen eventually. Just keep hitting refresh. Once you see that I’ve posted a review, you’ve got to act fast. Open the review, count to 120, then rubberstamp a VH on it. Then quickly go into the comments section and tell me all about how you just spit soda out your nose onto your keyboard, or how you are actually Rolling On The Floor Laughing Your A.ss Off. Offer me a reacharound, a fingerhuff, some opportunity to view you as having the good taste to love me. Then go do the same thing on the 5 reviews I wrote before that one. I may just take notice, and I may just find that witty little saying you have up on your profile page. And then you got me. Just ask ericexile, repulsemonkey, fezmonkey, ermitano, cowboydj, suspecterrain, tipu, sundogg99, benho, sloucho, radioguy, horswispr and Teykaerts. But if you don’t have the time or the wit to dance this particular dance, there’s still some hope for you ... one last way that you can earn a place on my WOT: 3. Be Black, Gay or Canadian If you’ve been to the movies in the last 40 years, then you know that black people have a sort of folksy wisdom and inner strength that the rest of us don’t possess. But it’s the sort of folksy wisdom that can make white people better, more tolerant, and more capable of reaching their individual potential qua white people, if they’re just willing to spend a little more time offering up a patronizing type of quasi-friendship. Do you think Gene Wilder ever would have become America’s most beloved Hebrew if he hadn’t opened his heart to Richard Pryor? Would Rod Steiger have nailed Liz Taylor if he hadn’t first come to accept the competence of Sidney Poitier? What would have happened to Matt Damon’s golf game if he hadn’t let Will Smith carry his bag around a finely manicured southern country club? I’ll tell you the answers: No. No. And Phil Mickelson. I’ve learned this lesson. I know the importance of down-home wisdom, and I know that it’s the sort of wisdom that can osmose through anything, as long as you give it a chance. Well, my WOT is the place where I give it a chance. I don’t even really care if you’re not a real black person. I’m fairly certain that those I currently have on my WOT are faux African-Americans. This is the internet, and virtual folksy wisdom and inner strength will work just fine here. The important thing is that you maintain the fiction with enough consistency that others will look at my WOT and think: “Well now, will you look at that! Fine young jew trusting a black person; that’s what I like to see.” Likewise with the homosexuals. By and large, they’re cooler, smarter, richer and better educated than you and me, and having gay friends adds a patina of all those things to my persona. When trying to build up a little respect at a place like epinions, it helps to have a boatload of smart, cool people on your WOT. But it takes time to actually read through epinions to determine if someone’s smart or cool. That’s why you should thank your lucky stars that so many people are willing to advertise their sexuality on their profile page. “Gay” means “Smart/Cool” which is why I reserve a full 20% of my WOT at all times for people who claim to be gay. You don’t believe me? Go read ed_grover, hashal, Urbanist, stephen_murray, thom413, DavidK93, MrsNormanMaine, jerryla323, phineaskc, psychovant, chrisbickel and zenhues. You won’t find smarter, better writers on the site, I’m willing to bet. Now wouldn’t it have been better if you had just trusted me on this one truism? You could have saved yourself a lot of reading time. And you can save yourself a lot of effort, in terms of getting on my WOT, if you just own up to it: You’re Gay! Finally, I automatically add any Canadians that come across my path to my WOT. It doesn’t mean I actually trust them; I don’t. But I think the American distrust of (non-French) Canadians has gone on too long and is largely responsible for the precarious position that we as a nation, now find ourselves in in the international community. If we pretended to be a little more accepting of the cultural differences of Canadians – of the fact that they just look at things different than we do – and stopped judging them (openly), I think they would come to accept our unique idiosyncrasies too, and maybe, just maybe, we could all live in that gleaming city on a hill after all. I’d like to do my little part by reaching out to the Canadians, which is why I added nathsmom, dancingpotato and Divine_Cheese (until proven otherwise, all British people are Canadians) to my WOT. In conclusion, many people have accused me of only trusting Asian women in their 20s or 30s who review restaurants, especially if they were also lawyers. Tanster, megugrrrl, smiles33, kboo and juliazz at one time made up nearly 25% of my WOT, and some assume that there’s this whole other “category” that I’m willing to bestow my approval upon with a less critical eye. In my own defense, all five of them claimed to be gay Canadians when they first sent their beaver shots, and having been three sheets to the wind at the time, I believed them.  |
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