I admit, they still get me too. Even the hundredth time that I’ve seen the same category of headline, I click on it and go to the article and sure enough, I’ve seen that one before. Just in different words. Over time, I’ve collected some standard templates for our old classics that never die, and here will lay them down for the purpose of saving us all some time. Whenever you see the following headline links, here’s what is guaranteed to be lurking behind them:

Something about spam. - We get a lot of spam these days, but what should we do about it? Here’s an idea. No, that won’t work. Here’s another idea. No, that won’t work either. Wait a minute, what if we tried… no, we did that before.

Programming sucks! - Translation: programming sucks from the point of view of my tiny little iron box which has one slot drilled into it near the bottom so I get a a letter-box view of the wall I’m facing and not much light. I had it drilled into my head that Visual Basic/ Java/ C++ is the only language in the universe and Microsoft is the only platform, so of course I’m unhappy. If the only part of the grocery store I had discovered was the spinach/ brussel sprouts/ collard greens section, I’d think food sucked, too.

Coolest/ Weirdest/ Craziest Whatever Ever! - Boy, am I desperate to get a better ranking on Digg/ Reddit/ Fark/ Netscape/ Clipmarks! Can anybody help me by voting for this link? I want to be a 1337 Web-2.0 news-submitter, too! I think I’ll get girls this way.

[NSFW] - Guaranteed to get me a better ranking! This story will be front page news! Everybody likes boobies!

Something about RIAA - Gee, the RIAA is practically a modern-day mafia! They just busted a dog kennel for playing music on the speakers - they even rounded up all the dogs and lined them up against the wall and shot them with Tommy guns. And then a guy that looked just like Rico Bandello said, “Yeah, see? You chumps jim the gig again and it’s coituns, I tells yah! Cause we dish it out on yah, yeah, see?” Naughty, naughty RIAA!

Is this the year of Linux on the desktop? Hmmmm, Linux does this, this, and this. It still needs to do that, that, and that. Hmmmm, maybe not. Maybe next year. We’ll see.

Something about Digg - MMMMM, Digg traffic! Yummy, delicious Digg traffic! Diggers love to read about themselves; I can write about anything about Digg and the Diggers will be all over it like ants on a donut. Bonus: some juicy Kevin Rose gossip. May be true, may be complete codswallop, but they had to visit the site anyway to find out!

Rumor about Apple or Google - Guaranteed codswallop, but millions of Apple/ Google fans will click through to read about the latest buzz anyway.

Related Posts:

• It’s Traffic Day (Or: Digg is Over-Rated)
• The Biggest Bad Guys of Technology 2007
• Avoid Digg Ban
• Digg Friends
• If Geek Sexual Roles Were Reversed

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