Azaroth

Quiz: What Should You Really Fear?

Wired.com recently attracted my attention through an advertisement, asking “WHAT SHOULD YOU REALLY FEAR?”. An interesting premise, and perhaps they could provide more than the usual schlock of a Forbes, or say, an AskMen article.

After clicking the link, I was greeted with a short article and a poll. The first question was a trick! Ohoho! Clever. But all too soon I ended up seeing this article for what it was. Shiny filler, designed to attract dumb people (mission accomplished I suppose). Although in my defense, I was just bored and too lazy to learn a new skill.

Some of the questions actually irked me a bit, though. I might suggest you look into Mad Cow Disease, or more appropriately vCJD in general, a little deeper and obtain basic facts about the disease before you declare it irrelevant. The large majority of those who die from the disease will likely have it incubate harmlessly in their brain for 20+ years before it kills them. A hotdog you ate in 1995 could be your cause of death in 2015, basically. And there are some pretty wild educated estimates out there as to what the final death toll will be.

A comment along the same lines can probably be made about the chemicals & pesticides question. No, I sincerely doubt that not washing a piece of fruit will cause me to keel over and die instantly, or even develop mouth cancer within a month or two. But over lifetimes, you can’t possibly guess how many cases of cancer are caused by general chemical contact and ingestion.

The premise of this “article”/poll is a bit interesting, if a bit obvious and overdone. But unfortunately the execution is slipshod, saying absolutely nothing new and certainly not providing educated insight.

Question: Is paying for Google Adsense clicks for traffic to your site, hoping that those visitors will then click your own Google ads, actually an intelligent strategy for turning a profit?
Answer: Only if your content isn’t garbage and those users become long-term repeat visitors.