In yet another brief fit of work avoidance curiosity, I was taught something interesting. Look at the main news headlines of CNN, Fox News, and Google News, and then at digg.com, a web site that tracks the most popular web sites at a given moment, and (I think) a pretty good gauge of what people care about right now.
CNN, Fox, and Google seemed to agree that the most important stories of the day are terrorist plots in the UK, the JonBenet Ramsey case in Colorado (and now Thailand), and the war between Lebanon and Israel.
Digg, however, shows us that what people really care about right now is an amazingly accurate recreation of New York City – with Lego! This site gets more than 1000 digg points than the #2 site of the day. And for reference, the first mention of terrorists, JonBenet Ramsey, or Lebanon or Israel is #39 on the list, and it’s an interesting sattelite image of oil spilled along the Lebanese coast. It got just over 500 points, compared to Lego City’s 3,600+ points.
This was pointed out by Joe D’eon, a commercial airline pilot who does a very interesting podcast. He sees this as a sign that the mainstream media aren’t really telling us what we actually care to know.
And you have to admit, a Lego New York City is pretty cool.