It's something that every meme learns sooner or later: The internet has a short memory. Just a year after it voted him the most influential person in Time's annual poll, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has been downgraded to 42nd place. You can now find him snuggled between Miley Cyrus and author Tucker Max.

Lest you doubt the validity of the list, it's topped by 4chan founder "moot," so, yeah. This is serious business. Oh well, at least Shiggy still beat the Pope on this completely useful list.

(Joystiq)

Miley Cyrus > Shig-man...

How today hurts me.

You realise 4chan rigged the poll to put moot at the top?

http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/13/hacking-recommenders/
http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/15/inside-the-precision-hack/

Forgive me for being ignorant, but what the hell is 4chan? I'm hearing it all over, but I don't have the slightest clue on what(or who) it is.

It's a website (4chan.org) where it's like a forum but each post must have an image associated with it. The boards are seperated by topic, with /b/ being the "Random" board. Most of the memes and macros you see on the internet were created or made popular on /b/, such as lolcats,"over 9000", Rickrolling, "All your base are belong to us", Mudkips, etc.

They also do "raids" on other websites and organisations, where thousands of people go and do something stupid or random. This poll hack was an example, others include mass anti-Scientology protests through the use of memes and getting hundreds of people to stand in Habbo Hotel (an internet 3D chatroom thing) wearing afros and saying "Pool's closed".

There are lost of other *chan imageboards like 7chan and others which are along the same lines but less (in)famous.

A good reference for all things 4chan and memes is Encyclopedia Dramatica, though the website (much like 4chan itself) is filled with inappropriate images.

darkhaven63