About a year ago I did a prankster net.art piece called "IFC Hack"
Here in NYC, there's a TV station called IFC (independent film channel). All the young film makers aspire to have their work presented on IFC. A year ago they opened up an youTube like website where everyone could upload their films. They have a rating system based on two parts; 1. how many hits and 2. votes by other members (you must join the IFC site to upload a film). I tend to stay away from main stream commercial art endeavors. I find them stupid, boring and old fashioned. I decided on a lark to see what my videos would do on the IFC channel. http://medialab.ifc.com/film_detail.jsp?film_id=1496 I uploaded a video and voted for myself, giving myself 5 stars. Then, since I have two emails I joined again and voted again. My video shot up to number one on the list. This lasted for about 15 minutes than I was knocked off by someone giving me a one star rating that lowered my average. I noticed that the same 10 videos were always on top. I decided to play a game. I found videos from honest people who had put up videos but not voted for themselves. I immediately gave them all five stars knocking the top ten films off the front page. This lasted for around 15 minutes and then all the original 10 videos were reestablished via a large number of votes cast. I realized this was impossible. There must have been producers and promoters who were manipulating the voting to keep their products on top. Since I have my own server I decided to set up a crude system where I gave myself hundreds of email addresses. I then voted for my video and or other videos to keep me on top and kick off the other 10 videos. This went on for a couple of days but the end result was that my IP was banned from the site. I imagine that the other marketers were more cleaver than I was and simply used google mail or figured out a rotating ip address or any of the myriad other ways you can use to mask information trails. In any case. The moral of the story is that information and democratic "polls" are being manipulated and distorted by those who have the tech savvy or paid marketers. It's the height of propaganda. In my experience, mediocrity with power wins out over talent. This is the metaphor for the era of the George Bush presidency.