Zipf-adeedoo-Bob

Before I get into this…

Here are the current top five from MIXX:

1. Kim Kardashian: Sister’s Wedding Best Night of …
2. 9 Amazing Facts About Bill Gates
3. Prozac Approved in Europe for Children as Young…
4. New Marine Corps Combat Fitness Test
5. Facebook Marketing Case Study - Mad Men

Now from DIGG:

1. xkcd - A Webcomic - Creepy thumb
2. Awww, So Cute: 5 Smallest Countries in the World [w/Pics] thumb
3. On what Planet was this NOT a Hate Crime!?
4. DNA Test Shows Hitler Skull Is That of A Woman
5. This Week In

And from Newsvine:

1. ‘Grandma Bandit’ Robs Two Houston Banks Hours Apart
2. Some Texas districts change tune on abstinence-only sex ed
3. Debbie Stabenow Makes The Best “Your Mom” Comment In Human History
4. Facebook poll asking Should Obama be killed causing stir
5. Grandma Arrested for Purchasing Cold Medicine

(Evidently Reddit was hacked yesterday and most of the top five reddits were about that.)

I do not like these ranking services and have found nothing in this Thing to convince me otherwise. Simply put, popular does not mean quality. If the examples above aren’t proof of this, watch broadcast commercial television. Most of this is tabloid and shock news. I’m sorry to be a snob about this, but most of the crap that goes viral and ends up on the top of these lists is not news, much less pertinent. It’s there because it shocks and gets a reaction, or because it’s gossip, or any other classification you can come up with that does little to truly inform.

In conclusion, I like editors and editorial boards. I want a professional assembling a portfolio of articles within a particular scope for me to digest. I trust they have done their work and that the selections represent pertinent information about the world I live in, be it news and articles about politics, technology, the US and world, sports, whatever. If they haven’t, it will show and I’ll take my information behavior elsewhere.