dimanche 8 mars 2009

Les Américains aussi ont leur "viedemerde"

La version anglo-saxonne de ce site défouloir consacré aux claques, tuiles et autres mésaventures de la vie, fait un malheur outre-Atlantique. Pour le plus grand bonheur de ses deux créateurs français.

Qui a dit que les Français étaient un peuple de râleurs ? Depuis le mois de janvier, les Anglo-Saxons s'en donnent aussi à cœur joie sur le site fmylife.com, comprendre «Fuckmylife», clone américain du désormais célèbre Viedemerde.fr.

Forts du succès de ce site-exutoire où chacun peut exposer ses galères avec humour et spontanéité, les deux créateurs français de VDM, Guillaume Passaglia, 27 ans et Maxime Valette, 20 ans, ont décidé d'exporter leur concept aux Etats-Unis... tout en pilotant ce nouveau site depuis la France.

Pari réussi : lancé en janvier, fmylife.com reçoit environ 1 million de visites par jour, contre 400.000 pour son cousin français, et le nom du site a déjà 66.400 occurrences sur Google.

Le succès n'a pourtant pas été tout de suite au rendez-vous : les deux concepteurs ont dû changer deux fois le nom du site depuis octobre, avant que la magie du bouche-à-oreille ne fonctionne outre-Atlantique. Guillaume Passaglia reconnaît notamment que l'emploi d'un gros mot, comme «shit» ou «fuck» dans le nom de domaine passe moins bien aux Etats-Unis qu'en France. «Une fois qu'on a trouvé le bon nom, c'est parti comme une trainée de poudre, de pote en pote. C'est viral», explique le jeune homme au figaro.fr.

Concrètement, fmylife.com est en tout point identique à son patron français, lancé en janvier 2008. Comme en France, les internautes peuvent voter pour déterminer si l'auteur a effectivement «une VDM» et s'il a bien mérité ce qui lui est arrivé. Seule différence : au lieu de «Aujourd'hui» et «VDM», tous les messages commencent par «Today» et finissent par «FML», c'est la charte.

(...)

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2009/03/06/01003-20090306ARTFIG00442-les-americains-aussi-ont-leur-viedemerdefr-.php

dimanche 1 mars 2009

Porn in the USA





Red State Citizens Consume The Most Online Porn In The USA


According to a nationwide study of anonymous online credit card transactions, Americans living in traditionally religious, conservative states consume more online porn than their godless liberal blue state fellow citizens, with Utah leading the way.
Benjamin Edelman, an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School, analyzed anonymous credit card transactions to attempt to find a link between the rise in online porn consumption and division of "red" and "blue" states from a sociological standpoint. "Do consumption patterns of online adult entertainment reveal two separate Americas," Edelman writes, "Or is the consumption of online adult entertainment widespread, regardless of legal barriers, potential for embarrassment, and even religious conviction?"
Ewan Callaway of New Scientist analyses Edelman's findings, noting that after Edelman factored in population density and broadband usage, Utah was actually the state with the most online porn subscriptions per 1000 broadband users. Conservative states made up the bulk of the top ten, in terms of porn subscriptions. As Callaway notes, "Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama."
Edelman notes a difference in porn preferences between red states and blue states: "Using individual-level data from a Hitwise sample of ten million anonymized U.S. Internet users, Tancer (2008), finds that adult escort sites are more popular in "blue" states that voted for Kerry in 2004, while visitors from the "red" states that voted for Bush in 2004 are more likely to visit wife-swapping sites, adult webcams, and sites about voyeurism," a fairly fascinating insight that could surely be explored further.
Church-going porn subscribers also tended to download less porn on Sundays, as church attendance provided a drop in porn usage. States that banned gay marriage had 11% more porn subscriptions than states that had not banned gay marriage. And, as Callaway notes, "States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behaviour."
Conservative hypocrisy is no surprise: anyone who has watched the Republican party fight off allegations of bathroom sexual encounters, child molestation, and prostitutes has witnessed the "Do As I Say, Not As I Do" philosophy that seems to sweep through the right-wing on a regular basis. Yet Edelman's research provides evidence of said hypocrisy; those who feel it necessary to judge others on their sexual choices and "morality" seem to have no problem accessing pornography, which many religions view as immoral and wrong.
And yet although the red states tend to view porn more often than blue states, Edelman finds that porn is a fairly purple subject, accessed in each state across the nation: "When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16680-porn-in-the-usa-conservatives-are-biggest-consumers.html

http://people.hbs.edu/bedelman/papers/redlightstates.pdf