Grand Unification Theory of Reproduction
Four out of five doctors recommend removing that leech from your neck. You’re supposed to apply them outside the body. That’s our key action point of the day.
I stylishly removed my fedora and flung it like a frisbee. No phone booths were to be found. I was about to write something for the Daily Diatribe, a major metropolitan daily in the uber city of Grabham. And I was their intrepid reporter.
Yeah, it was something like that when I had my latest epiphany.
We all know parents are the worst people to have children. But why?
The idea came to me when watching the birth of a little baby deer. Plop! It landed on the ground. Gross. But in a few minutes it struggled to it’s feet. It was already walking!
A few more minutes and it was able to prance. And, by the very next day, it was able to beat an average University of Portland student at ping pong. But what did this mean? (Besides the fact that UP students can’t play ping pong for shit.)
Oh, yeah. Now I remember. Human babies are slow at survival and being able to fend for themselves. Our species may be the most intelligent (heh!) on this planet but it comes at a very high cost. We all start as utterly helpless lifeforms.
And therein lies the rub.
How They’re Gaming Yelp
Never underestimate the human desire to game systems. Why expend actual effort when you can “win” by cheating? Because, to the victor go the spoils. Today I’d like to explain one way that business owners go about gaming their reviews.
So there’s this thing called Yelp. They claim to be generally positive system but the dictionary definition of the word “yelp” is: “a short sharp cry, esp. of pain or alarm.” Yeah, baby. Those are my kind of reviews. Let’s go negative and keep it that way. Don’t believe me? Look it up in your own dictionary.
I went to the trendy meat cafe and they served me an elk burger that was oozing blood. That’s how I earned “connoisseur of raw elk meat” on my Twitter profile! And, oh yeah, you better believe I yelped it as soon as I got home.
My understanding is that Yelp frowns on business owners asking for reviews. That’s bad form in a reputation system that’s supposedly driven from a wellspring of organic experiences from normal people like you and me. Normal! Yeah, right.
Here’s how the gaming works:
You place an order on a website. A few days or weeks later you receive a survey request. “How did we do on your recent order?” and what not.
You’ll likely be given the ability to enter some comments and provide a rating. If you give them a good rating, they’ll say thanks and provide a clickable link to the Yelp website where you can enter a review. If you give a bad rating, they only say thanks. No linky for you.
Voila! It’s as simple as that. The system just got gamed. The preliminary survey is nothing more than a sieve to sort the good eggs from the bad. The good eggs are passed along to Yelp and the bad eggs go down the chute. You might think that businesses appreciate negative feedback most of all because that’s vital information to help them improve. You’d be wrong. Why waste time on that shit when you can be gaming the system instead?
This is just one small example of gaming. People in the world of business spend more time thinking about stuff like this than they do on actual products and services. And they’re really good at it. That’s ingenuity.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to nosh on some raw elk. RAWR!
BlogFestivus – Day Eight: The Reindeer Before Easter
The Reindeer Before Easter
by Tom B. Taker
Blixem was melancholy. Another winter and it was the same old thing. A whole year of preparing for one crazy night. He was in a rut deep enough to hang Christmas stockings. He wandered aimlessly away from Christmas Town followed by his pet, Hooman.
He trudged all night without purpose through the snow until he found himself in a forest. Then, at dawn, he stumbled into a strange grove of trees. They were arranged in a circle and each contained a door with a mysterious symbol.
“What’s this?” Blixen said. “It’s someplace new!”
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The $7.19 Blues
If you think about it, what are the topics I blog about? It’s not as varied as you might think. Work, driving, and grocery stores. That’s about it. This post will be about the latter.
I do something weird every single morning. Something that sets me apart from many. And I do so enjoy being apart.
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Shouts from the Abyss 
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