Frustration with Congress is even seeping over into the non-political areas of the web.
Ari MelberIn another sign that frustration with Congress has spread well beyond people who follow political news, the irreverent FAIL Blog announced today that its audience just voted Congress the biggest “FAIL” of the year. The blog doesn’t focus much on politics—previous FAIL of the Year winners include Kanye West and Justin Bieber.
If you are over 35, perhaps you are wondering what FAIL means, (or whether you can find something else to read). It refers to a major or “epic” error or failure, often embarassing, and it grew into an Internet trend where people emblazon the word “FAIL” over an image. (FAIL blog even includes a form where people can make and share their own nominations.) For example, here are this year’s winners:
About 60,000 FAIL readers voted in the survey, settling on Congress despite stiff competition from famous train wrecks like Kim Kardashian, Charlie Sheen and Casey Anthony (who all finished in the Top Ten).
FAIL Blog is part of the very goofy and very successful Cheezburger blog network, which has grown to draw 24 million visitors every month, under the leadership of Ben Huh, its 33-year-old founder. Mr. Huh got started by plowing $10,000 of his own money into buying an offbeat and user-driven site called I Can Has Cheezburger, which focuses on, as the New York Times once reported, the pairing of “photos of cats with quirky captions.” With sales from ads, merchandising and five spin-off books, the company generates revenue in the tens of millions of dollars. The Times noted that the sites are not just popular because they are fun—they are popular because they run on a constant, pulsing feedback loop of user-driven content that reflects how people are feeling this minute:
One secret to the company’s success is the way it taps into the Internet zeitgeist. It seeks clues to what is funny right now by monitoring the Web for themes bubbling up on community forums, blogs and video sites.
So the site’s take on politics, when it does weigh in, probably reflects something real. For his part, Mr. Huh says this years’s FAIL results show that the distaste for Congress is more widespread than ever. “Our fans have spoken and it has to be somewhat expected,” he said, “in a year of D.C. scandals, gridlock, crises and a Gallup approval rating of 13 percent.”
Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at amelber@hotmail.com. Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.