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Observer Effect in Blogging
Observer Effect: Acknowledgment that the act of observing will make changes in the phenomenon being observed.
So yesterday I read the latest XKCD.
Like the typical Internet geek who reads XKCD, I immediately open Google and search for the exact phrase "Died in a Blogging Accident." Of course, I don't know if the answer was ever "2," but now the search yields 7,900 results, most of which seem to refer to this XKCD cartoon. And now I have added one more.
Update: One suspects that the number was always greater than "2", since filtering out responses that include "XKCD" still yields over 6000 results.
Posted on January 12, 2008 at 08:52 AM | Permalink
Comments
Can we coin the term "Heisenblogging"?
I too did the search when I saw this yesterday.
Posted by: Kyle Bennett | Jan 12, 2008 11:16:24 AM
I'm not sure about the filtering search (maybe it only checks page text, and not links?), but I, too, searched for "died in a blogging accident" shortly after he posted the comic, at which point there were 18 results. I looked at a couple, and they just pointed back to the comic. A commenter on one of the pages in that search said that there were only 10 at the time of his search, so I could see things getting back to two.
I suppose I should have searched that set of results for the "original" two sites, but it would seem they are lost now.
Posted by: DKH | Jan 12, 2008 11:48:50 AM
Well, whatever it is it is certainly hilarious. How the hell do you die in a blogging accident?
Posted by: napablogger | Jan 12, 2008 12:26:05 PM
"How the hell do you die in a blogging accident?"
Liveblogging from Pamplona?
It's the knitting accidents I'm curious about.
Posted by: Kyle Bennett | Jan 12, 2008 1:45:01 PM
I'd buy the 2 result per-comic, even with the filter, all I can find are references to the comic. If someone can find a reference that doesn't go to the comic I would love to see it.
Posted by: Ryan Frank | Jan 14, 2008 12:20:53 PM
I get over 16,000 hits now, but when I first searched I only found 10 and most of them where references to the xkcd comic (I didn't check all of them), so I buy the two hits.
Posted by: Tim Fowler | Jan 15, 2008 8:47:05 PM
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