I think the title above should be assumed, at least in brackets, when reading almost anything online now. There are disturbing losses in the whoredom that Internet traffic trolling has become. Take honesty, for a start. Gone. Truth gives way to a high-schoolish nudge permeating much of the Internet and infecting most blogs. Everybody's in the know. "Can't say too much, you understand; don't want to spell out something concrete."

There's usually nothing to spell out. If you have the correct tone, it will be forwarded by somebody. Tone sells. When i run into some popular blog posts these days, they read like a bad Hollywood gossip column. I've never read most of the popular blogs that so many flock to. Instapundit? Who gives a fuck? Andrew Sullivan? Don't even know who he is; I just see his name thrown around as an ultima-blogger. Is he the guy at Instapundit? I don't know. Is my life missing something that reading a megablog can give me? Do I need to use the word "blogosphere"?

Increasingly, there's a self awareness to blogging that's splitting off its rare non-practitioners into the only feeds in my bloglines basket. If i see a self-referential, hanging-​by-​the-​high-​school-​locker tone at a blog, consider me bailed. So tired of it.

Perhaps worse than the insider taint is the concept whore. If you want to see the ultimate cluster fuck example of this, just read today's The Money Is In the Long Tail, by Tim Worstall. The guy is getting on his knees and blowing the reader into forwarding his cute way of repackaging (and distorting) economics truths that have been known for centuries, long encapsulated and understood in ways that expose his new attempt as pure smoke — except for its brief flurry this week on the Internet. The disappearance of traditional publication opportunity costs (e.g., physical printing, distribution) has opened up the spigot for this trash that somebody in the old days would have refused to front the paper stock for. For this example, he's merely the second person (that he notes, right off the bat) trying to grab on to somebody else's concept whore piece — a not as bad, yet still worthless, The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson.

What is "The Long Tail" about, using plain language that doesn't try to pretend it's the emperor's new clothes? It is about the natural yet astounding efficiency brought to the market by databases and the new ability of a global group of consumers to query those databases with ease. That's it. This is self-evident material that anybody with eyeballs and a spare moment saw as eBay emerged; tremendous value was added to what was previously junk. By cataloging it (via databases) and allowing supply to connect with demand in ways that before were woefully inefficient or impossible, the Island of Misfit Toys was disbanded. The margin was permanently altered. Whether for obscure antiques or "forgotten" songs, new life was breathed into marketing and distribution by databases and their newly acquired direct user interaction (mostly the Internet). In some cases, as in his jukebox example, the database actually stores and serves the product. Wonderful. The benefits of these new facilities are immeasurable. But couldn't we honor that wonder by not farting out some unnecessary buzzword that really is simply intended to glorify the first person ballsy enough to try it? Must we have no restraint?

In the marketing of these bold "new" vacuu-cepts, you'll often find linguistic sleight of hand trying to make something out of nothing (the ultimate goal of the style) for that audience stupid enough to miss the obvious:

...[M]eet Robbie Vann-Adibé, the CEO of Ecast, a digital jukebox company whose barroom players offer more than 150,000 tracks - and some surprising usage statistics. He hints at them with a question that visitors invariably get wrong: "What percentage of the top 10,000 titles in any online media store (Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, or any other) will rent or sell at least once a month?"

Most people guess 20 percent, and for good reason: We've been trained to think that way. The 80-20 rule, also known as Pareto's principle (after Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who devised the concept in 1906), is all around us. Only 20 percent of major studio films will be hits. Same for TV shows, games, and mass-market books - 20 percent all. The odds are even worse for major-label CDs, where fewer than 10 percent are profitable, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

But the right answer, says Vann-Adibé, is 99 percent. There is demand for nearly every one of those top 10,000 tracks. He sees it in his own jukebox statistics; each month, thousands of people put in their dollars for songs that no traditional jukebox anywhere has ever carried.

He has just asked what percentage of the top 10,000 titles will rent or sell at least once a month, and then tries to pretend that such a question is missed by Pareto's dubious principle (because we're so fresh these days). Does this really require explanation to debunk, or are you with me already?

Pareto's principle, by the way, is a widget that will mean whatever you want it to (as long as you use an 80 somewhere, and a 20), but in this case is intended to suppose that out of all items in an inventory, 20% will account for 80% of sales. What the hell does this have to do with items which have already been defined in the question as top sellers? LMAO. As Jay Leno used to ask back when he was funny, "Are we morons?" This is rubbish that's trying to sell the reader into thinking the writer's led him to Texas Tea. It should be shunned, but it obviously has not been. He follows it with this further insult:

People get Vann-Adibé's question wrong because the answer is counterintuitive in two ways. ...

The answer isn't counterintuitive. Ask anybody who's found a strange item on eBay. C'mon, folks, this obvious benefit of, in whatever form, getting more sellers with more buyers is not even worth an article if you have your brain turned on, and will never be worthy of a new buzzword whose sole purpose is to glorify its proselytizer if he can make it stick.

So out of the woods come the desperate mega-pretender zombies — sycophants who want to up their stats by plowing further into a ridiculous concept to see if they can get their names attached to it. In his shameful attempt today, Tim Worstall writes:

It might surprise you to know that two of the cherished objectives of leftist types are actually in conflict with each other. They are, at extremes, mutually exclusive. And the long tail is the reason. In this brief interregnum before this meme is used to explain why the sky is blue and the sun rises in the east, let me explain it for you.

"Brief interregnum"? Ha! Sorry, fella, but that ship sailed the day the first moron forwarded Chris Anderson's original stab. And "meme"? Somebody slap that asshole for even using the word. I believe the first time I saw this "be careful, because people just like me are going to be out there" doggerel was in the Book of Mormon. Didn't buy it then either. Worstall's big "new" thesis is that taxes discourage the creation of wealth. Wow! And we have to endure the mystical bombardment of all sorts of "new" concepts until we figure out that the insider tone, the all-knowing nudges, and the implied claims of originality are simply the Internet's red-light district where rude people didn't have the decency to turn on the light before you walked in.

I have a new concept. It's called "ignore". Don't touch his article. Don't print this one here. Don't forward them. Don't pretend they're saying something important. If they were, and you were able to recognize it, you'd have already thought of it yourself (or would soon).

The Internet needs an enema. These statist fools trying to come up with the "correct" amount of taxation by appealing to "The Long Tail" and other ephemera should be shunned with cold intent. Do it. Stop buying into these foolish conceits. Stop pretending that if we wink at one another fast enough we can create something worthy out of nothing. Better yet, ask of everything you see, "What is the point? What is this guy really saying?"

The answers to those questions are hard to find in the torrent of smarm coming across our screens every day. The only way it will change is if bullshit is bypassed without regard for its wrapping paper.

Improve the world. Vow today that you will not forward or repeat anything for which the answer to the question "What is he saying?" is not worth sharing. This article is a good example. I've written hundreds of words for a conclusion that is essentially, "Non-commercial communication on the Internet is becoming all form and no substance." Big fucking deal.