Archive for October, 2005
For many moons, the Black Hats and White hats fought a war that many thought would never end. But now, at last, we may finally see peace in our time. A rengade group of SEOs, embracing and re-interpretting an ancient Chinese symbol, have chosen to unite the two sides against a common enemy: Grey Hats.
Yin Yang or… |
|
The renagdes choice of symbol? The Yin Yang symbol, also known as the I-ching, the name the SEO renegades have chosen for their radical group. At the very heart of Chinese philosphy, the I-ching, with its all black and white motif, is claimed by devotees to be a statement on SEO that leaves no room for greys.
“Black or white, white or black. It is right there in the symbol, man”, leader of the renegade I-ching, SEO_guru_professor, said to isos.
“And what is a Grey Hat?”, he continued. “How do you do something a little bit bad, or a little bit OK? Seriously, dude, make a frickin’ stand. Fences are for dividing, not sitting on. So get off the fence ya namby pambie behinds and pick a side. I-ching, the philosophy and our group, demands no less.”
SEO_guru_professor, said to be both the figurehead and philosophical heart of the group, claims that anyone who is grey is the groups target, and no one that claims to be anything but black as the ace of spades with a tiny speck of white at the core, or visa versa, will be safe.
“We plan to start with a saturation Blogging campaign, in which as many blogs as we can get up and running as soon as possible will all start shouting our message, damning Grey Hats. For obvious reasons, we are having some internal conflicts about the best approach, with the black hats wanting to automate the whole process, and White Hats claiming that well written, useful blogs are a better long term approach, leading to a better Return On Insults (ROI ). Thankfully, no one has yet suggested any marginal tactics, so we only have two extreme choices to deal with.”
The first target of the I-ching will be Grey Hat News. “They claim it, right there, in their domain name. If they can’t make a stand so bad they name their site Grey Hat News, they are asking for it.”
Responding to claims that the I-ching are reading too much into an ancient symbol whose meaning has been bastardised continually since the Peacenik movement of the 1960s, and that commentary on SEO was hardly the intended message of the symbol, SEO_guru_professor responded with an unprintable tirade of profanity, before saying “…if you don’t, like, get the I-ching, man, then like, ^&%$% off away from me, dude. You aren’t worth wasting my time on, your Grey Hat troll apologist. I bet you have never made a stand in your life. You make me sick…” before falling back into profanity.
The targets of I-ching refused to comment, mainly because isos didn’t ask them, but if we had, they are sure they would refuse on the grounds that “…grey hats are against all extremist views. Why can’t we just all love each other?”
isos promise to keep a close eye on the I-ching as they develop…
October 27th, 2005
ISoS today announced a major rebranding effort. Gone is the two capital letters, one small, one capital that have become the symbol of hillarity. In there place are the incredibly simple yet rediculously elegant four lower case letters, isos.
“To be honest, it just got annoying”, Blog contribulator Michael said. “I can’t type at the best of times, and Shift I, then S, let go of shift o, shift S was too much for my meager typing talents. From now on, isos will always be in lower cases, and anyone attmepting to use even a single capital letter will be flamed, laughed at or, if that fails, sued.”
Such extreme Brand fanatacism and protection is not uncommon in the world, with Nike recently settling out of court with 20 school teachers in and around Quebec whose ticks when marking school work bore a frightening resemblance to the Nike swoosh. The teachers promised to “…make two distinct lines in all future work, and never blend the lines in a swoosh like manner”. The teachers further agreed to promote Nike in their Classroom for an undisclosed length of time via posters.
But for a lightweight blog with minimal readership and even lighter social impact, such dedication and protection of a Brand is unusual, to say the least. When quized over the name change and fanatical Brand protection, Michael continued on his long winded rant.
“Look, we may not write serious stuff, we may not make any money Blogging, and we may not be sure if people are laughing with us or at us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take our Brand seriously now, does it?
“And we do take it seriously. Super serious. Wouldn’t crack a smile ata comedy festival serious. Extremism, look at me the wrong and I’ll hit you serious. Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me? I can’t see anyone else here, so you must be talking to me Taxi Driver back when De Niro was cool serious.
“And I mean really, how many ™ do we hold? At least two I can think of, and we couldn’t get one for the Trapezoidal Linking Matriflux™, which we defend like rabid dogs, and leave isos a sitting duck to be pinched by any spammer with two computers and an ISP, could we? I mean, it just wouldn’t be cricket.”
The simlarity of the isos name to the range of iXyz products available, such as the iPod, has also not gone unnoticed, with Apple insiders reportedly furious at isos. This resulted in a tirade of nonsensical wailings from Mr Motherwell.
“Oh come on, puuuuuuleeeeeaaaaaase, don’t get me started on the whole wanky “i” before every name stuff. That is soooo 2003. Besides, we aren’t iSos. No way, no how, not ever. We didn’t even consider it until I just brought it up with myself. Sure, I have an iPod, but I have had it since like forever, long before they sold out and went all mainstream and Intel loving. Besides, iSos wouldn’t solve the underlying problem that caused the Brand change in the first place; my inherently bad typing. Would it now?”
“So get off my back, alright? ISoS is now isos, end of story, move on, nothing to see here.”
October 22nd, 2005
Tired of exploiting the stereotypes about searchers and Search Engines, and in a hopeless attempt to broaden our appeal beyond SEM geeks, ISoS have instead turned our razor sharp wit and biting satire to another stereotype, George W Bush’s famed stupidity.
Utilising competitor analysis data pulled from ISP logs situated outside the Whitehouse and Camp David, fictional competitive research company B.I.N. (Big Important Nam) inc, utilising their Market Analysis Charting Guru Companion 2005 Lite Suite, have been able to plot and graph what exactly Doubleya was searching for on given dates. The following graph shows common, big ticket searches, or the “head terms” Bush Googled:
The most interesting snippets include:
- Doubleya’s discovery of Google in January 2003 has resulted in a flurry of Googling ever since. It seems Doubleya’s obsession began with [Miserable Failure]. Ever since, it appears that first thing he does when he gets to work, when he works, right at the crack of noon, is Google [miserable failure]. Confidential ISoS Whitehouse correspondents have told us that, so concerned was Doubleya at this SERP, that they secretly had the results switched in May, with Mike Moore first, followed by Hillary Clinton and George third. Doubleya was apparently so overjoyed at being “fourth” (sic), that he took a holiday to celebrate. That said, they did notice that the rate of clicks for the number one ranked site dropped from 42% to 38% after his change was made, proving that Bush was a far better choice as the most relevant result, and further reinforcing independent research.
- Before the invasion of Iraq, Doubleya made several searches such as [should I invade I rack] (sic), [where is Iraq] and [is Iraq sunny this time of year]. No one is sure if these Googlings returned the “right” answers, although subsequent searches ([has Iraq war started yet]) seem to indicate they did.
- During the Hurricane Katrina crisis and in the early aftermath, the search phrase [where is new aweleans] showed up. This was quickly followed, in classic search usage progression, by more targeted searches like [is new orleans in america], [how from my ranch is new orleans] and [if I went to new orleans, would I still be in America]. As the crisis escalated, searches such as [what do fema do], [how do they name hurricanes] and [good spot for fly fishing] became increasingly common.
- Underage drinking featured heavily, no surprise given Barb jnr’s run ins with the law. His Chillen seem to be a problem a lot, as [ask dr phil how to be better parent] was a frequent search, as was [does the naughty spot work on teenagers] after the launch of Supernanny, rumoured to be the President’s favourite show.
- Despite being all grown up and president of the most powerful country in the world, Doubleya still suffers anxiety. [does daddy love me] and [am as good a presidant as daddy] (sic) were frequent searches for the President.
- Despite strong fundamental Christian views and support, it appears Doubleya has frequent lapses of faith. Doubleya Googled [is god real], [what is evolootion] (sic), [did we really descend from monkeys] and [is evolution why arnie looks like a gorilla] soon after the “Intelligent design” debate began.
The UK division of BIN supplied results for Blair, but all he ever seemed to Google was [cheap makeup delivered].
October 20th, 2005
Previous Posts
