It’s official, fellow Stumblers, we have been categorized. Are you an Owner, a Purist or possibly a very cool sounding but really you’re a bit of a penis Destroyer? Do you give every page a thumbs down and are difficult to please or what about all thumbs up but no reviews? Do you still live at home with your parents or attend group therapy often?
I often wondered, after turning the computer off at 4 am with a bloody painful wrist, if I was part of a huge but secret social experiment. But it seems now that the only experiment going on with regards to Stumble was a study involving 1000 volunteers at a university in Manchester in November 2007.
Scientists wanted to perform an in depth study into the volunteers behaviour whilst using the Stumble website and toolbar. The 1000 volunteers were chosen from a random selection of people from the site who had previously expressed an interest in helping with the study.
The experiment started with all 1000 volunteers being put into categories as per their selected tags on the website, the head scientist leading the study Dr Von Aschlocke soon realised that this was a huge mistake “We initially grouped people together using the preferences that they had selected in their tags on the site, however we soon realised that this created chaos in the room, we had “social sensitive’s” sat next to “robust individuals” so we clearly needed a very serious rethink and quickly. The solution was easy, we had to put them into “categories of people” and sit the same categories together, so that is what we did “.
The following is an extract of the study report …. see if you can spot the very obvious mistake – ‘The scientists proceeded to look at twenty clicks on the toolbar and any reviews they left to ascertain which group they should be put into.’ – did you spot it? They were asked to only click 20 times! If this was a proper study into the behaviour of us Stumblers it is obvious that to click only 20 times is an impossibility. I’m surprised the study finished peacefully because if anyone tries to drag me off my computer after only clicking 20 times they will receive a poke in the eye!
Anyway, back to the experiment! So, after having had the volunteers click away and ‘do their thing’ they proceeded to categorize us.
1 Happy-Go-Lucky
With subgroups of “happy go lucky don’t really care” and “happy go lucky arty”.
2 Purist
With a sub group of “purist arty”.
3 The Emotionals
With sub groups of “down right dangerous” and “webcam wide eyed stare”.
4 Owners
Owners didn’t seem to have a sub group but the scientists did notice that some of the happy-go-luckys used to be “owners” and they seemed to change their ways when they realised that the internet was for everyone not just themselves.
5 Destroyers
These had no sub group they were all the same.
Before I proceed and give you the definitions of the above categories have a quick guess as to what you might be. Ok, have you had a moment to reflect on how you have been branded by some turd in a white coat whilst doing your favorite hobby? Why they had to do this study I don’t know, I’m sure the money could have been better spent finding a cure for excessive nasal hair or that itch you get up the crack of ya butt whilst stood in very delicate social surroundings.
Blah blah blah, back to the study. I’m sorry for digressing so much it’s just that now I can’t Stumble properly without wondering what category that last few clicks put me in….. or what my evening average was!
The scientists then proceeded to take a very indepth look at each group’s behaviour whilst using the toolbar and also looked at the postings on their blogs.
If you thought you were a happy-go-lucky Stumbler here is what the scientists gave as your description.
“The happy go luckys were quite positive people by nature. They would tend to click through the bar quite quickly and only stop on a page to read when it caught there attention quite well. They were happy to click “I like it “ quite freely and move on without leaving a review of any sort. One thing that did stick out was the fact they didn’t thumb down many pages at all, they preferred to simply click off and carry on stumbling rather than leaving a shitty review. When questioned why this was, most of them agreed that there is enough negativity sapping the world so there was just no need to add more. The only difference with the sub groups was how they posted in their individual blogs, the normal happy-go-luckys where neat tidy and formal , the ‘don’t really care’ were a bit more random and happy to post anything that pleased them where as the ‘arty’ blogs were, well , arty and stunning… but still happy-go-lucky.”
Was that description you? If not, read on to see if you are a purist.
“The purists were a bit of a strange group, you know, the kind of people who would take a DVD back to the store because it was upside down in the box. These types hardly ever clicked ‘I like it’ as they were very very hard to please …. every restaurant owners nightmare. They were however quite happy to ‘thumb down’ a page and leave a strange review. The only difference in the sub group was again in the blog style, the standard purist didn’t have many friends if any, but the purist arty had an average of 900 fans due to the immaculate arty blog style.”
Are you a purist? I don’t think I fit that description, which is good because the name sounds a bit ‘lentil eating, tree hugging, read a book’ to me.
This is how they described the emotionals (sounds like a film – a group off cry babies running around the streets with AK47s). “This was a really tough group to study, as naturally emotional people they were, well, quite emotional a lot of the time, so we had to try and coax them to the computers with the promiss that after the study they could use the computers to check their e mails and forum postings on letsholdhands.com. This group had some serious tag settings that they were very protective of and they didn’t really seem to communicate that well with the others. They tended to border on the arty side and definitely lent towards to ‘thumb down’ more than the ‘up’ . Their blogs were dark in colours and when asked about the personal lives the words ‘therapy, medication and darkness’ were always present. There wasn’t much difference in the sub groups just the way we approached them and gave them the day’s briefing. One sub group was asked very politely to carry out the experiment and the other just told what was expected of them, I think it’s obvious which way round that was!”
Next we have the owners.
“The owners were very passionate about the site itself, about trying to keep the site and internet just how they like it rather than how each individual wants to see it and use it. At one point we had to put a screen sectioning them off from the rest of the study group as they were very prone to trying to tell others what they could and couldn’t give the thumbs up to. It was also very strange because the owners all tried telling each other what to do, they all thought they knew best and it was just chaos.”
One of the volunteers said, after the experiment, that he over-heard one of the scientists saying “If there had been the internet 60 years ago both Stalin and f*#king Hitler would have been Owner Stumblers!”. Charming. So, are you an internet dictator in the making?
Ignoring the description below, you have to hand it to these boffins to name a subject under study a Destroyer!
“The destroyers had a definite agenda and that was ‘thumbs down’ all the way, pages and pages and pages of red thumbs. We also had to screen these off from the rest of the control group due to them being “sensitive socials”. We also asked this group how many of them had been out for a beer within the last year, the large majority of them replied “A what?”. These people tended to be extremely geeky in nature and had ketchup stains down their shirts, probably from a meal their mother had made because they still lived at home. Communication, or lack of it, was also really big issue for these people.”
So there you have it folks, here ends the study.
Penicillin, a man on the moon, the wheel, the Big Mac…. all great moments in mankinds history which when looked back upon from thousands of years in the future will still continue to amaze. Will this experiment rank highly in mankinds achievements or survive the ravages of time, I doubt it.
Since reading the report and having spent my usual ‘every free minute’ on the computer I have now decided I’m a ………….
Purely emotional happy-go-lucky destroyer who doesn’t care
…………. type of stumbler.
