But a Jape

“Obviously the green block goes in hole D! Did any of you even pass high school geometry?”

– a viral marketer

Ward Cunningham is credited with saying, “The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.” A corollary to this might be, “the best way to drive engagement is to fervently argue for the wrong answer,” or perhaps, “insist no one can give the right answer.”

You may have noticed this in action on Facebook, Twitter, or elsewhere – an image of a poorly formatted math problem followed by tens of thousands of comments arguing over the Order of Operations. Or a simple statement: “There are NO countries that start with the letter C!” And everyone falls for it every time, all the while insisting, “What an idiot this poster is! I’d better share their idiocy with all my friends/followers so we can all pay attention to them!”

– James